His victory at the head of the country now appears within reach. The left-wing opponent Gustavo Petro emerged as the big winner of the legislative elections, Sunday March 13, in Colombia, obtaining historic results against the right in power. The left-wing coalition thus won 17 seats in the Senate out of 102, ahead of all the other traditional formations, according to partial official results published in the evening.
In the House of Representatives, the left-wing coalition won 25 MP seats out of 165, in second position behind the Liberal Party (32), but neck and neck with the Conservatives and with the highest number of votes, according to these same results. The right-wing party of outgoing President Ivan Duque, which had obtained the highest number of votes in the Senate in the last legislative elections of 2018, suffered a heavy setback, arriving this time in fifth position and fourth in the Chamber of Deputies.
Nearly 39 million voters were called upon to renew for four years the 296 members of the Senate and the House of Representatives, an outgoing Parliament controlled by a right in power at the end of its tether and whose image has been considerably tarnished by affairs of corruption. They also had the opportunity to take part in the primaries of the main parties to choose the presidential candidates of May 29, in which the outgoing president, the conservative Ivan Duque, cannot stand again.
These primaries, sometimes described as the first round before their time, in fact monopolized most of the debates of the campaign. And as expected, Gustavo Petro, leading all the polls in recent months, won with around 80.50% of the vote at the head of the left-wing coalition. Former guerrilla, Gustavo Petro will face on May 29 the former mayor of Medellin, Federico Gutierrez, who will represent the centre-right coalition, and Antoquia Sergio Fajardo for the centre-left coalition.