Martha Lucía Ramírez

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Martha Lucía Ramírez
Senator of Colombia
In office July 20, 2006 – July 20, 2010

Born	April 7, 1954 (1954-04-07) (age 54) Bogotá Colombia
Political party	Social National Unity
Residence	Bogotá
Occupation	lawyer, diplomat, politician
Website	http://martaluciaramirez.com

Martha Lucía Ramírez de Rincón (born July 4, 1954 in Bogotá) is a Colombian lawyer, diplomat and politician. She has been ambassador of Colombia to France, minister of defense, foreign exchange and currently serves as elected senator in the Congress of Colombia.

1 Early years
2 Political career
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Early years

Ramirez studied law at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá and later did post graduate studies on Commerce law, Higher Management, Financial legislation. She obtained a Fellow from Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, specializing on topics related to foreign commerce.

[edit] Political career

Between 1990 and 1991 Ramirez was appointed as Director of the Colombian Institute for Foreign Commerce before this entity being transformed into the Ministry of Foreign Commerce with Juan Manuel Santos as minister and she as her vice minister from 1991 until 1994 during the presidency of Cesar Gaviria.

[edit] Minister of Foreign Commerce

She returned to Colombia and was appointed by President Andres Pastrana as minister of Foreign Commerce from 1998 until 2002.

[edit] Ambassador of Colombia in France

In 2002 Ramirez was then appointed as ambassador of Colombia in France for a few months. With the election of Alvaro Uribe as President of Colombia, Ramirez went back to Colombia.

[edit] Minister of Defense

President Uribe decided to appoint Ramirez as Minister of Defense becoming the second woman in Latin America to ever hold this title, after Michelle Bachelet who later became President of Chile. She served in this position from 2002 until 2003.

[edit] Senator of Colombia

After the ministry of defense Ramirez became a national and international adviser for the World Trade Organization (WTO). In 2006 Ramirez ran for congress representing the Social National Unity Party (U) in the legislative elections of 2006. She was elected senator with 64,966 votes.^[1]

Due to internal differences within the party the collectivity elected Carlos García Orjuela as head of the political party. Ramirez and other members of the party like senators Gina Parody and Armando Benedetti, and chamber representative Nicolás Uribe organized a dissidence.