White elephant in the room: Colombia swears in costumed anti-corruption activist as senator

Luis Carlos Rúa revealed himself to be Elefante blanco just three days before election for ‘his own safety’. Now he is tackling graft from senate floor When 102 senators were sworn in for Colombia’s latest parliamentary session, they included 32 women, 69 men – and one cartoon elephant. He had some difficulty making his way down the narrow central aisle of Congress’s ceremonial chamber, weaving past fellow senators in sharply tailored suits and dresses, before taking the oath in his pot-bellied white plush costume. Blending in was never an option for the new senator, who ran almost his entire campaign without revealing his identity. It was only three days before the election that Luis Carlos Rúa, 34, revealed himself as the person behind Elefante blanco, the White Elephant, a reference to the term used to describe overpriced, abandoned or ultimately useless public works, which he had spent the previous five years exposing on social media.

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