Neither the fame for his narconovelas nor the strength of the petrism They have been enough for Gustavo Bolívar. His rival, Carlos Fernando Galán, has overwhelmingly won the Bogotá Mayor’s Office, without even needing a second round. A negative image has weighed on Bolívar, which he has not known how to counteract during the campaign, and the hand on his neck that Petro has placed on him, obsessed with putting the construction of the subway at the center of the debate, which has clearly been a burden for him. the candidate he himself had chosen. If this had been proposed as a plebiscite on the president, the result is frankly devastating for the left.
The blow against the Historical Pact, the political movement around Petro, is very hard. The coalition had only been able to present candidates throughout the country due to the difficult internal relations between the different forces that make it up and the rapid decline in the popularity of the president of Colombia. There was no way to find consensus contenders. One of the few chips was Bolívar, one of his staunchest followers. “I am his apostle,” he often says. The plan, however, has not worked. The two have gone down hand in hand in Bogotá.
Petro wanted to place someone he completely trusted in the country’s capital, especially after the disagreements he has had in the last year with the current mayor, Claudia López. She has continued building the elevated subway that she planned and awarded to the previous mayor, Enrique Peñalosa. However, the president wants to reverse the project and bury it, as it works in almost all major cities in the world. He even went to Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping to help him convince the Chinese companies that build it to back down.
The president’s intentions may be laudable, but it was not the time to bring up the discussion while Bolívar was risking everything. The writer has spent half the campaign juggling to say at the same time that he would not stop the works and that he would introduce the president’s objections. With God and with the devil. When he scored poorly in the polls, in the last week, he even went to a notary to testify that there would be no delay with respect to what is being built at the moment. It was a clear way to distance himself from the presidential speech, but it was already too late and sounded like a desperate move. In the end, he came third, behind Juan Daniel Oviedo, who got one and a half points ahead of him, 43,000 votes.
The left has derailed into a progressive fiefdom. Petro won the Mayor’s Office in 2011 with 721,000 votes (Galán has obtained almost a million and a half) and from here he built the national projection that led him to the presidency. Claudia López, feminist, lesbian, also represented a disruptive option and it does not sound unreasonable that in three years she would be a candidate to replace Petro. The terrain, therefore, seemed fertile for a candidate who has campaigned with a refreshing speech, but at no time has connected with the electorate.
Bolívar, it must be said, is the candidate who has received the most attacks during the campaign. The petrophobia has been more evident than ever. His rivals, especially those on the more right, have brought up his support for the young people on the front line – he gave them helmets and protective glasses to prevent them from losing their eyes with the rubber balls thrown by the police – and often told him They have knowingly misinterpreted, ensuring that he as mayor was going to pay a million pesos to the boys who did not commit crimes. It was to distort his speech, in line with the attacks that Petro received during the presidential campaign, where he was accused of being a guerrilla and authoritarian. In the debates, Bolívar has often had to respond to exaggerated attacks from other candidates, some who did not even have the slightest chance, such as former Defense Minister and Uribista candidate Diego Molano.
Newsletter
The analysis of current events and the best stories from Colombia, every week in your mailbox
RECEIVE THE
The failure is more than evident. Bolívar joined the Historical Pact at the invitation of Petro, after they exchanged messages on social networks. Petro, very electorally astute, believed he had found in this self-made man, who rose from poverty to succeed in a big way, a continuity of his project. But all the negative factors have come together to sink a candidacy that at first sounded hopeful, but that in the long run has become one more wearing factor for the president, who has not had enough good news lately.
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS newsletter about Colombia and here to the channel on WhatsAppand receive all the information keys on current events in the country.
#Bolívar #Petro #fall #Bogotá