For the first time, the left has a real chance to win the presidential election in Colombia.
Newsletter Get the overview with our newsletter about Ukraine
–
“Voters rejected the safe elections,” he wrote The Economist after the first round of the battle to become Colombia’s next president.
The last round of the election, Sunday 19 June, is between a former guerrilla leader and a 77-year-old multimillionaire.
Both have backgrounds as mayors in large cities, and both had to leave City Hall before the election period was over. Another common feature is that both have tried to become president in the past.
That’s about the only thing they have in common.
Last weekend it was published three polls. Two of them show a small lead to the left-wing candidate Gustavo Petro. On the third, the opposing candidate Rodolfo Hernández is at the top.
The two emerged victorious from the first round of the election, Petro got a little over 40 percent and Hernández 28 percent.
The choice will be more exciting than this result suggests. For most established parties, their supporters recommend voting for Hernández.
If you combine the last measurements, Petro leads by just one percentage point. Thus, the result is completely impossible to predict. The proportion who have not decided is around 10 percent.
The measurements shows that Petro has the support of 64.1 percent of voters who are younger than 25 years. Hernández appeals most to the elderly.
Hitler or Einstein
“I am a big supporter of the great German thinker Adolf Hitler,” in Hernández in a radio interview six years ago.
This, of course, led to strong condemnation. He claimed it was a misunderstanding. Actually, he meant Albert Einstein.
The 77-year-old has earned a fortune on real estate. Combined with his own ability to make offensive and provocative statements, it is not surprising that he is often compared to Donald Trump.
He also uses social media actively. The older man has become a kind of Tiktok king in his homeland. Much of his election campaign has been short video messages. An example was when he said to the voters: “Look me in the eye, I will not let you down.” Those who did not content themselves with staring into his face quickly discovered that he was almost naked. He was only wearing swimming trunks.
–Not quite Trump
Unlike Trump, he has a fairly solid political background. He became involved in local politics when he became a rich man. In 2015, he became mayor of his hometown of Bucaramanga. After patting an opponent, he was sentenced to three months’ suspension.
Hernández left City Hall in protest after the government accused him of illegally interfering in the election campaign. Then 84 percent of voters said they liked the way he did the job.
Politically, he is a kind of classic populist, which opponents struggle to put in a right or left box. In the first round of elections, he was long behind the traditional right-wing politician Federico Gutiérrez.
But he made a good election campaign and beat Gutiérrez at the finish line.
In 2004, Hernández’s daughter was abducted by FARC guerrillas. He refused to pay a ransom. The reason was that then the father would increase so that others in the family could also be kidnapped.
The result was that the daughter never came home, she was probably killed.
The guerrilla soldier who became a presidential candidate
In the last round of the election, he meets an opponent who also knows a lot about the country’s guerrilla movements. Gustavo Petro (62) was 17 years old when he enlisted as a soldier in the rebel movement M-19.
This group was also behind kidnappings and murders.
In 1985, Petro was arrested. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison for possessing illegal weapons. After giving up armed struggle, he has marked himself as a spokesman for the democratic left.
On two occasions he has been mayor of the capital Bogota. In 2013, he was forced to resign, and he was banned from political activity for the next 15 years.
The ban was quickly lifted. Petro ran as a presidential candidate in 2018.
The first from the left?
If Petro wins on June 19, it will be the first time the country gets a president from the left.
His policies are far from recognizable from other radical politicians, such as the fight against economic inequality and the commitment to renewable energy. Not least, he wants to stop the search for new oil fields.
While Hernández says that women should be at home and give birth to children, Petro has promised increased efforts for gender equality.
–
