Former guerrilla fighter leads in Colombian presidential election vote, goes to runoff
Gustavo Petro, the former member of the guerrilla group M-19, won the largest number of votes in Colombia’s presidential election and will go to a runoff against Bucaramanga former Mayor Rodolfo Hernández, with both candidates promoting a message of radical change and dismantling of the status quo.
Former Medellín Mayor Federico Gutíerrez emerged as the greatest loser in the election, after giving up second place to Hernández, despite having the support of some of the country’s main political parties.
With 98% of polling stations reporting their results, Petro had a clear advantage against his main opponents, with 40% of the votes, followed by Hernández with 28% and Gutiérrez with 24%.
Hernández’s second place came as a surprise. The former Bucaramanga mayor had climbed in recent polls, but most experts predicted that he would not be able to overtake Gutiérrez.
More than 39 million Colombians were registered to vote in elections marked by polarization and a broad desire by the population to see changes in the country’s leadership. According to the latest polls, more than 75% of the population believes that Colombia is headed in the wrong direction, while only about 27% supported the current Iván Duque administration.
Although there are still three weeks to go, polls also predict that Petro has the best chance of winning the race against Hernández. While both candidates ran on a message in favor of change, the former guerrilla is the one seen by most Colombians as the most likely agent of change.
The runoff could still turn into a very close race if Hernández manages to persuade most of Gutiérrez’s supporters to vote for him, analysts said.
If he wins the June election, Petro would become the first leftist president of Colombia, a country that went through an armed conflict between the government and leftists guerrillas for decades that left more than 220,000 dead.
Petro himself is a former member of the M-19 who was imprisoned during his youth for rebellion and arms possession before he was released after the demobilization of the guerrilla movement and began to run for office.
Petro has competed in three presidential elections denouncing the status quo ruling Colombia, saying it has forsaken the poor, a message that did little for him in his two previous attempts but that now appears to have found its moment.
His radical pledges, coupled with his guerrilla past, are a source of concern for many of his critics, who accuse him of being too radical and compare him to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez when he won the presidency in 1999 and later replaced the country’s democratic system with a socialist dictatorship.
“Petro is a threat to Colombian democracy, to his institutions and to the tranquility of the country,” activist Fabio Andrade said from Miami.
But others believe that Petro will not be able to follow in the footsteps of Chávez from the presidency of Colombia. First, because the circumstances are not the same between the two countries, and second, because the leftist candidate would govern facing strong opposition that would force him to spend his four years in office making concessions to the country’s armed forces and other key institutions.
Many Colombian voters in Miami, who cast their ballots in stations set up by the Colombian consulate, also expressed concern about the election’s transparency.
“I hope that the result reflects what the Colombian people want,” said Juan Sebastián Naranjo from Miami. “It is difficult at this time to trust the institutions, particularly the control agencies, and what I hope is that these votes are transparent,” he added.
The confidence of Colombians in the electoral system took a hit in March from a scandal surrounding the legislative elections, in which more than a million votes were added to those that had already been registered in a pre-count.
Although discrepancies with the final results are not unusual, the magnitude of the difference prompted questions about the electoral system and concerns about the presidential elections.
Elections registrar Alexander Vega has denied that there are any fundamental problems and has insisted on the guarantees of a transparent system.
This story was originally published May 29, 2022 at 8:04 PM.
