One month before the presidential elections that could consecrate a leftist president for the first time in its historyIn recent days, Colombia has experienced episodes that are no less important and unprecedented, perhaps a harbinger of the arid stretch of the electoral campaign that lies ahead.
The confession made by the military to having executed a hundred peasants to simulate that they were fighting the guerrillas in the 2000s and the confirmation that former President Álvaro Uribe will finally go to trial -after being involved in more than 100 causes- were some of these episodes, all in the midst of the first anniversary of the historic protests against the economic and social policy of the government of Iván Duque.
The favorites
The polls foresee a victory for the moment, in some cases even in the first round of May 29, of Gustavo Petroformer guerrilla demobilized 33 years ago and former mayor of Bogotá, left-wing leader who represents a new coalition of parties and social organizations called the Historical Pact. If this result is confirmed, it will not be surprising, but it will be unprecedented, since in Colombia a left-wing option never managed to govern at the national level.
Of the rest of the candidates, the only one who is in a position to try to snatch the illusion from the left is Federico Gutierrezright-wing candidate (Team for Colombia), although he must overcome a strong negative image of the current government and the questionable situation of Uribe, accused by specialists as “the true president” of Colombia.
negative episodes
Petro, however, had to face a couple of episodes lately whose effect on the electoral result cannot yet be estimated but which could have a negative impact on his candidacy.
On the one hand, the leftist coalition had to distance itself from senator Piedad Córdoba -of great prominence in the negotiations with the FARC for the release of hostages in the mid-2000s-, punctuated by accusations of being related to Alex Saaba Colombian prisoner accused of being a front man for Chavismo in Venezuela.
“Petro will also have to overcome another episode, which is that of the recent visit that his brother Juan Fernando made to the La Picota prison to visit Iván Moreno, imprisoned for corruption and brother of the former mayor of Bogotá Samuel Moreno“, assures the political analyst Edward Marquez.
For the specialist, these two events make it clear that “nobody can take an election for granted ahead of time”, since the two events, but especially that of the Petro brothers and the Moreno brothers, threaten to present several more chapters before May 29.
Main demands and challenges
A recent survey published by the Latin American Strategic Center for Geopolitics (Celag) indicates that the main concern of society is the question of salary and work (63 percent), followed far behind (15 percent) by rising cost of living.
It is that, with the real danger of the violence exercised by the FARC removed after the 2016 peace agreement, the situation of the country in issues such as education with job opportunities, formal work and retirement, managed by a semi-private pension system.
For the Colombian sociologist Christian Arias Baronathis is due to decades of right-wing governments, which deepened “an accumulation process that has caused a state of hopelessness in young people, who cannot access education or formal work, and a failure in the issue of pensions”.
Arias Barona, a resident of Argentina for 10 years and a professor at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), advanced that the main changes that would benefit Colombia in an eventual Petro government would be related to an improvement in the socioeconomic situation and also in a “real implementation” of the peace agreement.
the peace agreement
“This agreement includes rural reforms, attention to the problem of illicit drugs, attention to the victims of the conflict, all issues that the current government relegated of its own free will,” evaluated the professor, who agreed with Alberto Yepesof the Colombian Human Rights Coordinator.
Last Thursday marked a year since the start of the wave of protests that demanded a change in the economic and social course throughout the country, which resulted in at least 84 deaths.mostly poor young people shot to death by the security forces, more than 900 wounded and up to a hundred sexual attacks committed mostly against women, Yepes pointed out.
According to Arias Barona, the Petro platform aims to answer those claims. “To young people it promises access to education and work, to the middle class a reactivation of consumption and to the elderly a solution for the retirement crisis”, she explained.
Petro’s future, if he wins
Both Arias Barona and Márquez and Yepes admitted that if they reach the Casa de Nariño, Petro It will not be easy to manage, due to the resistance already announced by sectors of power linked to the right and far right, such as the military forces, concentrated powers, the big media and even the state control agencies, in the hands of Uribe’s friendsin addition to a Parliament in which he must seek alliances with center parties.
“In case of reaching the government, Petro will have to scratch the bottom of the pot,” he illustrated Jorge Humberto Ruiza political activist from Cali, the city hardest hit by the repression of the protests, who takes it for granted that the future government, if it changes its political sign, will have to confront the concentrated powers with decades of usufruct of the national wealth.
“After Colombia became independent, a group known as the ‘creole elite’ has always been in power and does not want to lose its privileges. They are promoters of the extractivist economy, oil exploitation, land rental for monocultures. They leave aside family or zonal agriculture, which is one of the remedies that the application of the peace agreements would bring,” Ruiz added.