Xinhua News Agency, Bogota, May 29 (International Observation) The right wing is out of the presidential election, can the left wing in Colombia take power?
Colombia held the first round of presidential elections on the 29th. Preliminary vote counts released that night by the Colombian National Civil Registry showed that Gustavo Petro and independent candidate Rudolf Hernandez led the left-wing campaign coalition “Columbia Historical Convention”. Together they entered the second round of the presidential election.
The current presidential election has attracted much attention because the left-wing candidate Petro Petro has been leading in the polls and is expected to break Colombia’s long-standing right-wing ruling situation. Many analysts believe that after voters abandoned the right-wing and traditional political forces through the first round of voting, the situation of the second round of voting is still unclear, and it is difficult to predict who will have the last laugh.
left wing vanguard
As of press time, 99.99% of the votes have been counted. The results showed that Petro and Hernandez won 40.32% and 28.15% of the votes, respectively. Since neither received more than half of the votes, they will compete in the second round of the presidential election on June 19. Federico Gutierrez, the candidate of the center-right campaign alliance “Columbia Team Alliance”, ranked third with 23.91% of the votes, and missed the second round of voting.
Born in 1960, Petro was a member of the Colombian left-wing guerrilla M-19 (“April 19th Movement”). After the guerrillas were disbanded, he joined other former guerrilla members to form a new political party, and served as a senator, representative of the Congress and mayor of Bogota. During his tenure as a senator, he criticized the links between right-wing militants and politicians; during his tenure as mayor of Bogota, he vigorously promoted the fight against corruption and the construction of public works.
Petro was running for president twice in 2010 and 2018. One of the core propositions of his campaign is to free Colombia’s economic development from resource dependence and promote sustainable development transformation. He promised to halt all new crude oil projects after taking office and replace the current government’s reliance on oil revenue with the development of tourism and green energy, as well as a wealth tax. He said he would impose additional taxes on the wealthy to balance the fiscal deficit to ensure social equity, which has become his most left-wing policy.
Halfway dark horse
In previous polls, Petro and Gutierrez had long been occupied by the top two supporters, so local public opinion had generally believed that the second round of the presidential election would be between these two. However, since May, Hernandez’s approval rate has been rising and surpassing Gutierrez, and finally beat Gutierrez to qualify in the first round of voting, becoming a dark horse halfway through.
Hernandez, 77, graduated in civil engineering from the National University of Colombia and started his own construction company in 1972. He served as the mayor of Bucaramanga in 2016. He was investigated by the Colombian prosecutor’s office for slapping local MPs in 2018, and announced his resignation in 2019. That same year, he founded a political group focused on anti-corruption.
Hernandez, a self-proclaimed “engineer,” promotes himself as an “outsider” of politics. He ran as an independent candidate in this election, playing the anti-corruption card. Analysts believe that many Colombians show their dissatisfaction with government corruption by supporting Hernandez, and they also believe that Hernandez, a successful entrepreneur, will not be corrupt in power.
Unlike other candidates, Hernandez is not keen on participating in traditional political debates, preferring to reach supporters through online platforms. Guillermo Enau, a political analyst at the National University of Colombia, believes that Hernandez’s victory in the first round of voting reflects a change in the form of political participation in Colombia. “This is a victory of digital politics over traditional politics.” .
Situation unknown
Guo Cunhai, director of the Social and Cultural Research Office of the Institute of Latin American Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out that the obvious sentiment of Colombian voters is against tradition. The results of the first round of the presidential election showed that they abandoned right-wing conservative forces and traditional political forces.
Analysts pointed out that the current economic situation in Colombia is an important reason for this result. According to official statistics, in 2021, about 39% of Colombia’s population will earn less than $89 a month. In April this year, Colombia’s inflation rate reached 9.2%, a record high in nearly 20 years. Many people are dissatisfied with rising food prices, high inflation and social injustice, and are disillusioned with the long-ruling right wing.
Regarding the second round of voting, the previous survey results of the polling agency “Invamer” showed that if Petro and Hernandez faced off, the support rates of the two were 50% and 47.4% respectively, although Petro was dominant. , but the advantage is not obvious.
Some analysts believe that the second round of voting is full of uncertainty and the outcome is unpredictable. Petro may need to change some of his claims to win more centrist voters. Hernandez’s public support for Gutierrez after the first round of voting helped him attract right-wing voters, but it could also affect his image as a “political amateur”, leading to the loss of his fundamentals.