The country will have to confirm in the elections this Sunday if it risks with Petro’s leftist recipe, the favorite in the polls, or bets on the continuity of ‘Fico’
Colombia decides at the polls this Sunday, May 29, who will be its next president. Change or continuity are the proposed paths to choose after four years in which the country has stagnated due to the bad government of Iván Duque. The candidates have already exhausted all the promises, and the false news and disqualifications have bottomed out. Change the face of the country, consolidate peace treaties, end corruption, create jobs, guarantee pensions for the elderly and minimum wages for those who have never contributed, greater social justice, more educational centers, curb poverty and inequalities . The candidates have pledged their word promising everything that could be promised. The country is facing a delicate moment.
Until the last week, all the polls predicted a close duel between the representative of the left, Gustavo Petro, and the leader of the center-right, Federico Gutiérrez. The two former mayors, Petro from the Colombian capital (Bogotá), and Fico, from the second most important region in the country (Medellín), became the favorites. Until the phenomenon of Rodolfo Hernández has emerged, the oldest of all who, at 77 years old, seems to call the elections for a second round that would take place on June 11. Many analysts believe that Hernández’s candidacy is a joke, they call him “the old man of TikTok” for a reason, but his main motto of fighting corruption has also raised his options.
If a few weeks ago the general opinion voted that Petro would win in the first round, today the bets have changed. One day after casting their votes, Colombians continue to guess about the president for the next four years. Almost 40% of voters would choose Petro. 25% to Fico Gutiérrez, and the surprise is that Rodolfo Hernández has approached 20%, according to the latest survey by the National Consulting Center (CNC).
That Petro and Gutiérrez are the top candidates represents the polarization of a country marked by governments of right-wing parties, pure oligarchy, which has held power in Colombia for a long time. Some analysts speak of a right that has “kidnapped” democracy, a term that embraces what the Colombian political situation has been in recent years. Since the de facto government of General Gustavo Rojas Pinillas (1953-1957), the Liberal and Conservative parties executed a pact called the National Front through which they alternated the presidency until 1974, allowing the transition from the military government to the two-party democratic system where everything that it sounded like liberal ideas of the social democracy that was installed in other countries seemed to be prohibited even in the vocabulary. The left disappeared. It was a minority. He belonged to university students with communist and socialist ideologies, and to guerrilla groups such as the M-19, to which a young Gustavo Petro belonged.
violence grows
Little by little, with the 1991 Constitution, the leftist parties began to have a space on the political scene, at the same time that the violence of the FARC and ELN guerrillas grew, and of course the appearance of drug trafficking. Then the extreme right-wing parties presented themselves as a necessity to iron out the situations suffered by rural areas, ranchers and businessmen from the countryside, who were being seriously affected by the violent actions of the guerrilla groups and by paramilitaries, who were then supported by political parties such as Democratic Center and Radical Change. These parties, consequently, achieved a majority in Congress and engineered a situation in which they took over the governorships and mayorships of the most prominent regions. Behind everything there was always Álvaro Uribe, who governed the country for eight years and caused a period of twenty consecutive years of right-wing government. Today, many Colombians see in Fico Gutiérrez the continuity of this mechanism that has prevented Colombia from developing the Peace Treaty, and violence and corruption remain on the agenda of all the candidates.
The appearance of Gustavo Petro, with a project to improve Colombia through the idea that its citizens can live better, scares the right that fears losing power. Hence the accusations launched that Colombia will be a new Venezuela if the chosen one is Petro. The populist discourse has not been valid to change the polls. Until Sunday it will not be known if it has served for Colombia to vote for fear of change or decide to bet for the first time on a progressive leftist government.
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