On June 19, the eyes of the world saw how in just a few hours Gustavo Petro was declared the winner of the presidential elections in Colombia, in a quick and clean process. Colombians have taught the world a lesson on how to effectively conduct and resolve an election. Now a new stage in the politics of the Andean country begins, in which the stigmatized left, which has already called for a national agreement, will have to govern under the scrutiny of its supporters and others.
From now on, campaign proposals must go through political dialogue to become public policy, which will put to the test the fears of many Colombians who did not vote for Petro, such as his lack of dialogue and management capacity.
But one of the areas in which the candidate and the government program of the Historic Pact did not go into much depth is that of international relations. What can we expect from the new government?
Colombia’s positioning in the international sphere is one of the most sensitive issues that the next government will have to face, and speculations about its inclinations in this area are marked by the already worn out right-wing propaganda, which has historically appealed in all elections to the Venezuelanization of the country. Colombia.
However, we do have some guidelines. Both in this campaign and in the previous one, Petro distanced himself from the Venezuelan development model and its extractive premise based on the export of fossil energy without diversifying its national production. The future president also spoke about the authoritarian drift of the Maduro regime, noting, however, the differences with the first time of Hugo Chávez.
In this sense, it seems likely that the future government will take advantage of the discredit of the positions taken by President Duque and the Lima group to distance itself from the failed positions that continue to recognize Guaidó as a legitimate president and qualify Maduro as a usurper. Therefore, it is to be expected that Petro will opt for the third way, which, while recognizing the Maduro government, seeks to promote dialogue so that Venezuela can recover its democracy and its battered economy.
regional integration
As for the inter-American dialogue, in his speech after the victory, Petro stated that he will seek to include all the countries in the region in the integration process at the hemispheric level, a position similar to that taken by Mexico and Argentina at the 9th Summit of the Americas. Thus, it will also position itself among the countries that intend to be more friendly interlocutors with the authoritarian regimes of Venezuela and Cuba. In the case of Nicaragua, it remains to be seen how the new government will handle conflicts over territorial sovereignty between the two countries.
But beyond these possible changes in Colombia’s positioning at the regional level, it does not seem that this opening to dialogue with authoritarian governments implies a seal of approval for their political regimes. Petro will likely maintain his commitment to liberal, representative democracy and the rule of law, much closer to the governments of Boric, Chile, and Fernández, Argentina.
What has been a distinguishing feature throughout the election campaign has been a commitment to sustainable development. In the last super electoral cycle in the region, we saw how candidates took on the concern about environmental impacts, but with the obvious intention of mitigating the damages of investments in productive processes that leave a carbon footprint or affect water courses and ecological balance. .
Petro is making an important difference in this area and could, in fact, be regarded as the first environmentalist president in Latin America. Therefore, the multilateral system will have a friend in terms of promoting the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development and the Paris agreements. It is also to be expected that the Escazú Agreement will soon be supported from the Casa de Nariño.
In terms of involvement with the multilateral system, and more specifically with the UN, the new government will likely have a very different relationship with the country’s Peace Verification Mission. The Duque government maintained a tense relationship with the mission to the point that the UN had to put Mexican Carlos Ruiz Massieu, who is close to the outgoing president, at the head of the mission.
Equally important is his mention of the need for an international forum for corruption. He was probably thinking of the UN-sponsored CECIG (International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala), banned by the agents of corruption entrenched in the Central American country’s political power.
The last key point, and one of the most important in Colombian international relations, is the link with its relations with the United States, which for decades has been Colombia’s closest ally in Latin America, as Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stated during your last visit to the country.
At this point, the most likely scenario is a readjustment that consists of mitigating aspects related to security and drug trafficking and, perhaps, emphasizing climate change, where there may be a meeting point between both governments. Indeed, Petro spoke of the global importance of maintaining the Amazon rainforest as a major carbon sink, a position that is also close to that of the United States.
Colombia is a country with a lot of influence in the region, so the emergence of this new interlocutor in regional summits and forums will gradually strengthen certain repositioning in the international arena. Starting in August, we will see how effective this change can be.