Regional elections in Colombia: ‘The country returned to its comfort zone’

2023-10-31 16:03:02

This October 29 in Colombia, the victory went to traditional politics. With 55% citizen participation, the mayoralties of the country’s main cities remained in the hands of opponents or candidates unrelated to the leftist government of Gustavo Petro. How can we explain this unexpected turn, after a last period of governments that moved away from traditional political lines?

Colombia once again elects its well-known candidates. After four years characterized by atypical governments in the history of the country, the ruling left lost the regional elections in main cities such as Bogotá, Medellín, Cali and Barranquilla. And although the majority of those elected are critical of the president, their ideological diversity prevents us from thinking that they are part of the same movement.

“Some stability”

According to Andrés Segura, an expert in government and public policy, it is not an exclusively partisan election: “Beyond reading it as party or left to right, the country returned to its comfort zone. I mean, those are the usual politicians. The others broke our hearts, it’s not working. President Petro has generated many controversies and many disappointments. So we kind of go back to those that are beautiful, but that in the end put us back in a certain stability. And that was what happened in general in regional administrations,” he estimates.

Gustavo Petro obtained only two of the country’s 32 governorships, which represents a symbolic defeat that lowers his projections to negotiate the new policies that will govern local governments from 2024 to 2027.

Dilemma

“What Petro demonstrated is that he could not organize the Historical Pact politically. So what he is going to see is that, in his reforms, when he comes to negotiate the support of the parties, he will have a weak position,” Segura emphasizes.

The expert points out that then Petro will be “again in the dilemma that has always characterized him.” That is to say, either “it returns again to the moderate point with which the government began last year, and in that case it would have to enable a lot of bureaucratic negotiation”, in a “scenario where it can begin to deliver bureaucratic quotas to different parties to seek support.” ”.

Or, “the one that already happened at the beginning of this year, which was in his first crisis, that instead of seeking to be moderate, what he did was become radicalized and then withdraw his forces and consolidate a nucleus that guaranteed loyalty among his followers.” ”concludes Segura.