Around 39 million Colombians will go to the polls this Sunday to elect a new Congress and define the presidential candidates of three alliances, among which the leftist Historical Pact stands out, in which many take for granted a victory for Senator Gustavo Petro. The former mayor of Bogota leads all polls so far and it becomes the greatest hope of progressivism to get out of the crisis of the outgoing government of Iván Duque and take charge of the demands arising from the massive protests of last year. In addition to the Historical Pact, in which Petro’s main rival is the Afro-descendant leader Francia Márquez, the right wing will participate in the presidential consultations with the Team for Colombia and the center-left grouped in the Coalition of Hope. For the first time in an election 16 pews for peace will be includedreserved in the House of Representatives to organizations and direct victims of the armed conflict.
The six months of street protests initiated by a regressive tax reform defended by President Iván Duque, will be weighed in some way in the elections. “There is a lot of accumulated discontent from that process, and from strong national mobilizations in 2019 and 2021 which the government did not know how to process or channel. The country is still far from coming out of a pandemic crisis that left the economy badly hit, with youth and women unemployment through the roof“, he warns Page 12 Sandra BoteroProfessor of Political Science at the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá.
This scenario is illustrated by the 21 million people living in poverty and unemployment that exceeds ten percent. “Unlike the last electoral contests, where the issue of the peace process and the armed conflict were fundamental, at the moment the public agenda does not go through that. The fundamental issue is corruption, the mismanagement of Iván Duque and the mismanagement of the peace process“, holds Nestor Julian Restrepodirector of the master’s degree in Political Communication at Eafit University.
Petro in the lead and doubts on the right and center-left
In total there are 15 candidates for the presidency of Colombia, and practically there is only one certainty: the appointment of senator and former guerrilla Gustavo Petro, who takes advantage in all the polls. In her party, the Historical Pact, Petro will compete with other lesser-known candidates at the national level such as the social leader Francia Márquez, the former governor of Nariño, Camilo Romero, the indigenous representative Arelis Uriana and the Christian leader Alfredo Saade.
“Petro is going to win the consultation of the Historical Pact coalition, and surely with a significant percentage of votes. That will position him as “the candidate to win” for the presidential elections. For the other coalitions it is difficult to predict: so far there are many candidates both in the center and on the right trying hard to stand out“, warns Botero in that sense.
Under the banner of a more moderate policy, the Centro Esperanza coalition competes, led by Sergio Fajardo, former governor of Antioquia; Juan Manuel Galán, son of an iconic presidential candidate assassinated in 1989 for his opposition to drug trafficking; former senator Jorge Enrique Robledo; the academic Alejandro Gaviria and the ex-governor Carlos Amaya.
In third place in order of preference, according to the polls, is the right-wing coalition, Equipo por Colombia. At the head of the movement, Federico Gutiérrez Zuluaga, Enrique Peñalosa and Álex Char are committed to the economic and social continuity of the current government, with the traditional defense of the police and the armed forces. There are three more candidates who will not be measured in the inter-party consultations and will go directly to the first round: Óscar Iván Zuluaga, from the ruling Democratic Center; Íngrid Betancourt, who makes her political comeback after being kidnapped by the FARC guerrillas; and Rodolfo Hernandezformer mayor of Bucaramanga who had rapid growth in the polls.
Restrepo mentions the latter as an “outsider of Colombian politics” and points out that it is important to follow it because “It could reach a second round with Petro and we would have a very different logic than what everyone expects”. Meanwhile, the director of the organization Somos Ciudadanos, Philip Pineda Ruiz He adds that the erosion of the figure of former President Álvaro Uribe and his multiple criminal trials have undermined his credibility and diminish the possibilities of the right. “In the previous election to Congress, Uribe was the most voted senator with 800,000 votes. This time his party, Democratic Center, will feel the shock of not having that electoral support. The other half of the fall of the Colombian right is attributable to the poor performance of Duque as president“, raises the social researcher.
The legislative ones, overshadowed by the presidential primaries?
For some analysts it is probable that there will be important changes in the new composition of Congress. “I think the Historical Pact is going to do very well. There will be new parties coming in like the New Liberalism, and we will see how the traditional ones are reconfigured. How much governability the next government will have depends on that composition and with whom it must negotiate to materialize its agenda.“, Explain Botero.
But by voting on the same day, could the presidential consultations overshadow the importance of the legislative elections? “Without a doubt, the consultations are an interesting democratic exercise, but they have taken visibility away from the congressional elections: parallel elections, with electoral ballots whose design changed, are generating a lot of confusion in the electorate”, understands Botero even though Pineda Ruizthink the opposite: “The fact that the consultations take place on the same day as the legislative elections reduces abstentionism, which for elections to the Colombian Congress historically stands above 50 percent. And that reduction disadvantages the traditional candidacies of the right based on vote buying, patronage and money.”
What is clear to Pineda Ruiz is that the most voted listwhatever it is, will not have an absolute majoritywhich means that the new president of Colombia will have to put together a coalition with multiple parties. For its part, Restrepo points out that the legislative elections in Colombia had become “very operational, very client-based, so to speak, where patronage and corruption are very high, while what the presidential consultations have done is to invigorate the electoral campaign, give it an ideological boom that we did not have in Colombia“.
16 seats reserved for peace
As a great novelty of these elections, they include 16 seats for peace in the House of Representatives corresponding to the victims of the armed conflict. The peace seats are part of the pact that led to the disarmament of the FARC, the once most powerful guerrilla group on the continent. Although with the agreement the internal war diminished for a time, the violence is reborn with force. Several of the 167 municipalities where the deputies of the victims will be elected are under the crossfire of the armed groups that are financed by drug traffickers, which raises fears for the security and transparency of these votes.
For Pineda Ruiz this inclusion of 16 seats constitutes “a great step and opens the possibility for marginalized areas historically affected by violence to have representation in Congress.” The only problem, the researcher understands, is that “many of the candidates are allies of the paramilitaries, so not all the seats will be won by representatives of victims and displaced persons“.
Restrepo expresses the same discouragement: “In the end, these 16 seats are going to return to being part of that traditional bad habit of Colombian politics at the service of some regional bosses, not for what they were created, which was to give visibility to the victims who have voice and vote in the Congress of the Republic”.