Juan Manuel Galán

Juan Manuel Galán Pachón (born 29 July 1972) is a Colombian politician, currently serving as Senator of Colombia since 2006. He is the son and political heir of the assassinated political activist, politician, and presidential candidate, Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento. A former member of the Liberal party, he refounded his father's party, New Liberalism, in 2021.

Career Galán attended the Instituto Pedagógico Nacional in Bogotá, where he graduated in 1989, the year his father was assassinated. After his family relocated to France, he enrolled at the Paris Institute of Political Studies where obtained a Certificate of Political Studies in 1992. which caused a great deal of controversy, and he went on to disavow former associates of his father for abusing the memory of his father and using his image for political gains, The Liberal party list received a total of 1,436,657 votes,

He ran again in 2010, this time as head of the open-option electoral list put forth by the Liberal party. The Liberal party obtained 1,724,151 votes, of which 81,555 were for Galán who obtained the second-highest number of votes after Arlet Patricia Casado Fernández, the third-in-line of the Liberals' electoral list. and has openly called for a public debate on the issue in light of the failure of the war on drugs. Galán was the author of Law 1566 of 2012 which made psychoactive drug use, abuse, and addiction a public health issue, and mandated that it be treated as a disease, thus placing its treatment under the existent publicly funded health care system.

Euthanasia Galán is in support of voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, and as member of the Senate's First Commission voted in favour and worked to pass legislation that would regulate such practices. Both practices are allowed in Colombia after a 1997 Constitutional Court ruling, but no such laws to document and regulate the practice have been passed by Congress, preventing many from taking such measures, "no one can be legally forced to suffer or feel pain, to prolong a painful life, everyone has every right to be the master of their destiny and to have available the opportunity to decide, together with their family, about euthanasia procedures".

LGBT rights In 2013, Galán voted in favour of Recognition of same-sex unions in Colombia both in the Senate's First Commission and in the floor of the senate, expressing his position in favour of marriage for same-sex couples over other forms of legal unions which he considered non-viable.

Personal life Born in Bogota to Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento and Gloria Pachón Castro; the eldest of their three children; his two younger brothers are, Claudio Mario and Carlos Fernando. His father, Luis Carlos, was a former Education Minister, Ambassador, and Senator, who was shot to death by hitmen hired by the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar on 18 August 1989, when the former was running for President of Colombia. Juan Manuel's maternal aunt, Maruja, then-wife of Luis Alberto Villamizar Cárdenas, was kidnapped a year later, also on orders of Escobar, as part of a larger scheme by Escobar and his allies to put pressure on the Government to stop an extradition deal with the United States, something Juan Manuel's father supported.