In Colombia, Gustavo Petro brings the left to the gates of power

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Admittedly, he did not obtain the majority as he had hoped, but Gustavo Petro won 40% of the votes. The former revolutionary is in the best position to take control in the second round, on Sunday June 19, and change the course of history. Because since independence, Colombia has known only right-wing leaders – and a brief military dictatorship.

Coming from a middle-class family, Gustavo Petro joined a far-left guerrilla at the age of 17, which led to his being imprisoned and tortured by the army. When his movement was dissolved in 1990, he converted to social democracy and entered politics, being elected deputy and then senator. Because he denounces corruption, in particular the links between elected officials and the paramilitaries, he is threatened with death and forced into exile for three years in Europe. Even today, he never goes to a meeting without a bulletproof vest and around twenty bodyguards. Mayor of Bogota from 2012 to 2015, he leaves mixed memories of an authoritarian man and mediocre manager.

Presidential candidate for the third time, Petro presents himself as the man of the “change”, “progressive” rather than “leftist”. But its rise frightens businessmen, big landowners and soldiers, who fear a big “leap into the void” if the left wins, a transformation of the country into a new Venezuela.

In France, the French Communist Party and La France Insoumise welcomed its good result, which confirms the return of the left in Latin America, initiated in 2018 in Mexico with the victory of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, continued in Argentina in 2019 with Alberto Fernandez, in Bolivia in 2020 with Luis Arce, in Peru a year ago with Pedro Castillo, in Chile last December with Gabriel Boric.

By electing Ivan Duque in 2018, the Colombians thought they were making a fresh start. They were deeply disappointed. The unemployment rate is still peaking at 12%. And above all, last year, the head of state’s tax reform served as a spark for major demonstrations against poverty and corruption, rallies violently repressed by the police. In four years, his popularity rating has gone up from 55% to 20% and according to the polling institute Invamer, 85% of Colombians today think that their country is not on the right track.

While public opinion was changing, Gustavo Petro also changed. Last year, he said Colombia needed “democracy and peace” and not a socialist regime. In the mouth of a former far-left guerrilla, these words say it all about the evolution of his political philosophy. Or its opportunism, say its detractors. In fact, Gustavo Petro said he was ready this time to forge alliances with the traditional parties, which was not the case four years ago.

For 200 years, Colombia has known only right-wing presidents (and a brief military dictatorship); because of the permanent armed conflicts of power with Marxist guerrillas which have traumatized society, many voters are wary of the great transformations promised by left-wing political figures. Gustavo Petro knows this, having abandoned the idea of ​​organizing a constitutional referendum. But who still proposes raising taxes on the country’s 4,000 richest people and reallocating private pension funds to a public system. His first step, if elected president, will be to declare a state of emergency but to address hunger in the country. Out of 50 million inhabitants, nearly 16 million live with two meals or less per day.

He still has to face an unexpected adversary: ​​Rodolfo Hernandez, another figure of the anti-establishment, but anchored to the right this time. This 77-year-old businessman, who made his fortune in real estate, surprisingly knocked out the classic right and won his ticket to the second round. If he is often compared to former US President Donald Trump, it is also because he shares his mood swings, his rudeness, his populist invectives on social networks (he is the king of lives weekly on Facebook and TikTok videos). Mayor of the city of Bucaramanga, he has several times fought physically with his municipal councillors, whom he accuses of being “rats” and “corrupt thieves“.

At the end of 2018, he was even dismissed from his post for three months for having slapped in front of the cameras an adviser who accused one of his four sons of having received bribes. Today, one of his campaign slogans calls for “slap the slap on corruption”. He is known to have expressed a few years ago his admiration for the “German thinker Adolf Hitler”finally apologizing by assuring that he actually meant Albert Einstein.

Hernandez offers a catalog of whimsical measurements, from “closing of embassies” Colombian women in the world, to amortize student loans, to the obligation for all Colombians to go to the sea at least once. On Sunday May 29, he even broadcast a video on the networks where we see him following the countdown voices in a bathing suit and drinking a beer by the pool of his country house. Favorable a few weeks ago to hydraulic fracturing in the oil industry, and to the spraying of glyphosate to destroy coca crops, he finally changed his mind. Despite everything, Gustavo Petro hopes, much more than him, to federate the voices of dissatisfied people tired of the excesses of power and society.


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