This Sunday, June 19, Colombians put an end to one of the most exciting and polarized presidential campaigns in memory. Some 38 million voters go to the polls to choose between the antagonistic bets represented by the left of Gustavo Petro and the very conservative candidacy of Rodolfo Hernández.
Unlike the first round, where at least the most voted candidate was clearly going to be Petro’s, uncertainty has been hovering throughout the campaign for this second round, after Hernández has even been able to remove him from the Historical Pact first place in the polls.
The far-right candidate won more than 5.9 million votes in that first appointment on May 29 -28.17 percent of the votes that were cast that day-, beating Federico ‘Fico’ against all odds. Gutiérrez, who seemed to be the preferred option of the right to defeat Petro, who was trusted by more than 8.5 million voters.
The polls reflect in most cases a technical tie, although others give one or the other the winner by a narrow margin, however, both have already made it clear that they will accept the result whatever it may be. What the polls also agree on is the percentage of the blank vote, around five percent.
The last days of the campaign have been marked by the decision of the Superior Court of Bogotá to force both candidates to hold an electoral debate on the eve of this Sunday, after a tutela filed against Hernández in which He was accused of infringing the rights of Colombians by refusing to participate in this type of meeting.
However, the lack of consensus has left Colombians without debate despite the court ruling that forced it to be held before Thursday. From the Pact they have lamented that their rival has not appeared at the offices of the National Radio Television of Colombia (RTVC) to talk about the details of the face-to-face meeting.
Hernández has justified his absence by the lack of response from the judicial authorities to the questions he asked about the advisability of the court’s decision to force them to debate, a ruling that he described as a “Stalinist court.”
Challenges for the next president
Colombia is one of the most unequal countries on the continent, with 21 million poor people, while more than half of the land is in the hands of a privileged minority that does not reach two percent of the population. A deadly trap for the peasants, who, stifled by neoliberal and free trade policies, resort to illicit coca crops, in the hands of armed groups.
Inequality in the distribution of land is the main reason why an armed conflict was born that has now lasted six decades. One of the issues when the negotiation began between the government of the then president, Juan Manuel Santos, and the FARC guerrillas, addressed this issue.
However, six years later, the situation continues without significant progress and the peasant leaders who ask, for example, to switch from illicit crops to formal agriculture, are not only assassinated by the armed groups, but also by the military themselves. Between 2021 and so far in 2022, with one of the deadliest quarters, 188 camp leaders have been killed.
In recent years the scenario for the political class has changed. Although one of the problems continues to be the armed violence that infests every corner of the country, now in these elections the question of the already disappeared FARC guerrilla is no longer at stake, but rather those that had been relegated to a second flat, such as poverty, inequality and unemployment.