Colombians vote amid pledges of major change from leading leftist candidate
Colombians went to the polls to choose a president on Sunday in an election in which a former member of the M-19 guerrilla group, Gustavo Petro, has a comfortable lead and is expected to easily pass to a second round of voting.
Petro could win the presidency outright on Sunday if he manages to garner more than 50% of the votes, but the latest polls pegged his support at little more than 40%, with the rest distributed among five other candidates.
A runoff between the two candidates with the most votes has been scheduled for June 19. Opinion polls indicated that engineer and former Medellin mayor Federico Gutiérrez is best positioned to make the runoff with Petro, but the last few days have seen a significant rise in the popularity of Rodolfo Hernández, the former mayor of Bucaramanga .
Having failed to reach the presidency in his two previous attempts, Petro seems to have found Colombia ready this time for his message of change. The senator and former Bogota mayor has run a campaign full of populist pledges, including the redistribution of pensions, free access to public universities and the eradication of inequality.
His pledges, combined with his guerrilla past, are seen as too radical by critics, who compare him to Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez when he won the presidency in 1999 and later replaced the country’s democracy with a socialist dictatorship.
“Petro is a threat to Colombia’s democracy, to its institutions and to the country’s peace,” Miami activist Fabio Andrade told the Miami Herald.
But others feel that conditions in Colombia are not similar to those Chavez found in Venezuela two decades ago, and that if elected Petro will have to spend most of his four-year presidency making compromises with the country’s armed forces and institutions in order to govern.
More than 39 million Colombians are registered to vote in one of the 12,263 polling stations established in the country, or in one of the 250 places set up in 67 countries, including the United States, where the early voting process began on Monday. Polling stations opened Sunday at 8 a.m. and will remain open until 4 p.m.
The candidates face each other amid a overwhelming desire for change among Colombians, many of whom blame the government of President Iván Duque and the country’s traditional parties for the economic difficulties they are facing.
That sentiment has openly favored Petro, who for years has been promoting the need for a profound change in Colombian politics.
An opinion poll conducted by the Gallup firm earlier this month showed that 75% of Colombians believe the country is heading in the wrong direction and that only 27% approve of President Duque’s administration.
The polls also show the enormous economic difficulties faced by the sectors with the least resources, a factor that accentuates the discontent with Duque, even though analysts attribute the situation more to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic than to government mismanagement.
Among the different candidates, Gutiérrez is the one who is most identified with the Duque government and former Colombian rulers Álvaro Uribe, Andrés Pastrana and Cesar Gaviria.
This story was originally published May 29, 2022 at 3:32 PM.
