The 2022 Colombian presidential elections will have little to do with the previous ones, in 2018. On that occasion, there was an essential rift in the country due to the peace agreement between the state and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas, which persists. , but with hues. At the time, the right-wing caudillo Álvaro Uribe still played the cards in an influential way in the voters’ decision. And who emerged as a somewhat disturbing figure was Gustavo Petro, a former M-19 guerrilla, who had already given up arms through a peace agreement and was already domesticated by political life _he had been mayor of Bogotá and a senator_, although very high bounce rates.
In this context, he ended up winning a meek patron of Uribe, the moderate rightist Iván Duque, who liked to present himself as a “center radical”. His downfall in so many areas, however, such as the implementation of peace, labor and tax reforms, in the face of the pandemic, are bad news for the more moderate and dialoguing right that he represents and that had been following his figure.
With his popularity now plummeting, the tragic death of who could be a continuation of his non-Caudillesque style was former Chancellor Carlos Holmes Trujillo, who died of Covid in January 2021. For now, it seems that uribismo will have to go back to supporting a right-hand option from the caves that looked like it had already stepped out of the pages of history. This is Óscar Iván Zuluaga, Santos’ rival in 2014.
Zuluaga, ultra-conservative in customs and betting on the “anti-communist” discourse, had been advised by the Brazilian Duda Mendonça in a campaign in which he used the letter “Z” in his name like Zorro’s, and which illegally used secret information pilfered from the Armed Forces to attack then-President Juan Manuel Santos. The “Z” was an affront to those who put so much effort into negotiating peace, as it directly meant betting on revenge, that is, on more war.
He was defeated by the later Nobel Peace Prize winner Juan Manuel Santos, who was responsible for demobilizing the guerrillas, with all the challenges that the task still imposes.
The registration of candidates in Colombia can be done until the end of March, and there is time for the Uriba right to choose an option a little more palatable than Zuluaga. On the left, the candidate must be the same, at least in name. This is Gustavo Petro. With more alliances and fewer alliances, the leftist is no longer seen as the “Colombian Chávez” and benefits today in the polls from the adhesion of part of the center-left and the huge number of dissatisfied who took to the streets from April 2021, and that could change the course of this election if they confirm their adhesion to Petro.
On that occasion, what began as a strike in protest of a tax proposal spread to more than 500 municipalities, leaving frightening numbers of mobilization and repression. The support for the protests had 75% of the support of the Colombians one week before it started. Legions of informal workers who were excluded by the quarantine measures joined the protesters.
Among other things, he showed how the country had been suffering the impact of the pandemic on the economy, the shortage of work with the arrival of so many Venezuelans due to the humanitarian crisis and the consequences of implementing a peace with the guerrillas in an incomplete way, without, for example, , agrarian reform and the program for the reintegration of ex-combatants into society, pillars of the document. What’s more, without the pacification policies of the armed factions that today are strengthened by dissidence and still make Colombia the country with the highest number of internally displaced people in the West, according to United Nations figures.
It is not certain that Petro has the answer to all these questions, but rather that his approach would be totally different from confrontation, much less repression. Its commitment to the peace agreement was given since the beginning of the negotiations. In recent weeks, a United Nations investigation has pointed to the murder of 11 young protesters by security forces. It is a massacre. Petro proposes to reform them. According to the NGO Temblores y Amnistía Internacional, from April 28 to July 20, 2021, the high point of the protests, there were at least 103 cases of eye injuries.
The latest poll numbers give Petro a wide advantage in this year’s election, at least with the scenario as it stands today. If in part this is related to the meticulous policy of alliances that he has been carrying out since his last defeat, it also has to do with the fact that he has capitalized on part of that feeling in the streets, which is still a lot of tension and scolding.
But not everything points to an evident polarization. Some publications, such as The Economist, have been betting that a candidate from the center would have room to enter the second round and defeat Petro or even, if that happens, Uribismo.
At the moment, according to the most up-to-date poll, that of Invamer, Petro has 43% of voting intentions. Zuluaga has only 12.7%. Therefore, it is in this wide space that the center will play its main chips from now until March, in the choice of candidacies, and on May 29, when the first round takes place.
In this group are pre-candidates from different streams. Progressive intellectual Alejandro Gavíria, centrist Sergio Fajardo (known as the man who gave Medellin new life), Juan Manuel Galán, son of the historic liberal assassinated in the midst of a campaign in the 1980s. The so-called Platform of Hope gathers, for now, too many good intentions and admirable trajectories. But will they be able to turn that into a competitive bid?
An important sociological transformation was shown in the last Barometer of the Americas, which showed that the ideological distribution of Colombia has been slowly shifting to the left. In fact, it was even expected, as Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotá and former presidential candidate, commented to me in an interview during the negotiations. His thesis was that, with the Marxist guerrillas putting down their weapons, the left would become more palatable and even become fashionable in a country that until then had been synonymous with pain and deaths linked to the armed struggle. Add to that the waves of youth voter renewal and their feminist, pacifist, pro-environment and diversity agenda.
How much of the left this turn can be, is what we will see in this election. If well marked, it can give Petro the victory, if only partial and careful, it will favor a moderate and green progressive like Fajardo. None of this guarantees, either, that a movement of reaction against “communism” will not grow along the lines of what happened in 2016 on the eve of the peace plebiscite or the election of Gabriel Boric in Chile, almost threatening his victory in the second round with a real Conservative “frenazo”.
Like Piñera in Chile, there is very little Iván Duque can do to influence his election or even support a candidate. Its over 70% disapproval is against it. At least, he is expected to lead the transition in a democratic and civilized way, as we increasingly need to see in the region.
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