half that number, with no popular support or ideology.

In March, the rebel army lost its chief spokesman Raul Reyes in an attack by Colombian helicopters on a camp across the border in Ecuador. Later that month another commander, Ivan Rios, was killed by his own bodyguard, who received a $1m reward from the government when he delivered his boss's severed hand to security forces.

Then the army's founder and chief ideologue, Manuel Marulanda, died of natural causes, aged 78. In May, its most feared female fighter, alias 'Karina', surrendered and urged others to do the same.

But it is the specific timing of Operation Jaque, after a week of intense political pressure for Uribe, that is intriguing.

Last Friday, Colombia's Supreme Court found that former congresswoman Yidis Medina had accepted a bribe from the government that allowed Uribe's re-election in 2006. Uribe only won re-election after lawmakers - including Medina - changed the constitution to allow him to run for an unprecedented second term.

Following the Medina bribery verdict,

for which she will spend three-and-a-half years under house arrest, Uribe faced down the Supreme Court and demanded a referendum next year to ask voters if they want to rerun the 2006 election. His victory - especially after yesterday’s raid - seems assured.

The Medina verdict followed investigations linking some of Uribe's closest allies to paramilitary death squads. Uribe personally ordered the extradition of 14 top paramilitary leaders to the US in May, immunising himself as the scandal crept closer.

Early last month, opposition senator Piedad Cordoba alleged that the Uribe government was offering FARC $100m to reveal Betancourt's whereabouts.

The intense, bespectacled, yoga-loving Uribe is enormously popular for making Colombia safe once more by driving the FARC back into the jungles.

The release of Betancourt may be a political masterstroke. But its suspiciously convenient timing, coupled with the knowledge that he bribed his way into power in 2006, raises questions about his integrity that won’t quickly go away.