The polls fell short. Carlos Fernando Galán swept the Bogotá mayoral elections with 49% of the votes. In the centrist politician’s third attempt, the forcefulness of his victory also represents a setback for Gustavo Petro and the movement that brought him to power. The president’s candidate, Gustavo Bolívar, sank to third place and did not even reach 20% of support. Bogotá was the only hope of the national government to save the furniture in the local elections, but from the beginning of the count it was seen that this Sunday the electoral reality passed by Petrism.
Galán managed to convince almost one in two voters with his center-right proposals and a certain air of continuity in the work of the outgoing mayor, Claudia López, despite her low popularity ratings. The truth is that neither of them would recognize each other exactly, but López celebrated her victory on her networks, in a message that sounded more like an excuse to launch a new attack against President Petro. “If they wanted a plebiscite, they have it loud and clear,” tweeted the mayor, who in the coming months is expected to finally reveal her presidential aspirations.
Great Bogota!
If they wanted a plebiscite, they have it loud and clear!
Congratulations to the new Mayor @Bogota Carlos Fernando Galan @CarlosFGalan!
Congratulations to the revelation of the Bogota politician Juan Daniel Oviedo @JDOviedoA!
Bogotá is Respected!
The Metro has no reverse! pic.twitter.com/VkNJTCklHt— Claudia López Hernández (@ClaudiaLopez) October 29, 2023
If public opinion had insisted on turning these elections into a plebiscite for the president – something difficult to measure due to the multiplicity of acronyms, interests and territorial powers – Bogotá has served as a benchmark to verify what the popularity polls already indicate: the Petro drag brake. The president had personally appointed Bolívar with the intention of placing one of his own in what is considered the second most important position after the Presidency. But that place will be occupied by Galán, who has been very critical of Petrism since the 2022 presidential campaign. Bolívar received 580,000 votes compared to the almost million and a half that Galán achieved.
There are few political families better known in Colombia than the Galáns, a saga marked by the tragic murder of Luis Carlos (father of Carlos Fernando) in 1989. The then presidential candidate was gunned down at a campaign rally by hitmen hired by the Medellín cartel. , by Pablo Escobar, at the best moment of his popularity. In a time marked by the blurred borders between drug trafficking and politics, Galán Sr. dared to say in public what no one dared. That cost him his life, when Carlos Fernando was just a child, and marked several generations of Colombians, who still today think of him as a myth and wonder how the country would have fared if he had been president.
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The Galán brothers grew up without their father, but followed in his footsteps into politics. In 2022, about to start the presidential campaign, they managed to resurrect Luis Carlos’s party, the New Liberalism, with which they ran in the elections within the center coalition that passed through the polls with more pain than glory. This Sunday’s victory places a Galán in the highest political position in four decades of experience.
The overwhelming result – which forces us to look back to 1998, when Enrique Peñalosa obtained 48.8% of the votes – is essentially the sum of three details. On the one hand, the figure of a Galán, who, although he did not inherit the enormous charisma of his father, represents a moderate and focused option that in these moments of political stress in which Colombians live have clung to him as a call to action. calm, as an option without fanfare. On the other hand, Bolívar’s lack of connection with the voters and the drop in President Petro’s popularity.
And finally, the subway. Galán, like the calm option that he represents, has committed to continuing the works and for that reason alone he will have already won a few votes. The president’s obsession with paralyzing the construction of the elevated subway, advanced in recent years, to plan an underground subway terrifies the people of Bogotá who have been waiting for decades for a suburban train that would place them on a par with the great capitals of the world and relieve congestion. one of the cities with the worst traffic in the world. The sum of all these efforts, voluntary and involuntary, resolved the elections in Bogotá with results that do not admit of contestation.
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