Colombian Presidential Election

On May 29, 2022, the South American country of Colombia held the first round of voting for its presidential election.

For months now, the clear front runner has been Gustavo Petro. As predicted, he came in first with 40.4 percent of the vote. He and his vice-presidential running mate Francia Márquez are much more than a breath of fresh air.

Petro is a former guerilla. He and his running mate have a very progressive platform, including implementing the 2016 Peace Accord between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government, negotiated by Fidel Castro in Havana.

He is committed to significant economic and social reforms and aggressively addressing the climate crisis. Francia Márquez is a brilliant environmental lawyer.

As voting day approached, the military and conservative establishment became increasingly terrified that their decades-long stranglehold on power might be coming to an end.

Washington was even more anxious as a Petro presidency would surely mean that the end of its military collaboration with Colombia.

As the first round of voting on May 29^th drew nearer, the Colombian elite in partnership with the then American Ambassador to Colombia, Philip Goldberg, came up with a very clever plot to deny victory to Petro and his running mate.

To understand the plot, one must first understand Colombia’s electoral system. In the first round of voting, if no candidate receives 50 percent plus one of the popular vote, there is no winner. Instead, a second round of voting is held in which only the top two candidates from the first round remain on the ballot.

For months prior to the first round voting, the polling consistently had Federico Gutiérrez in second place. He represented the worst of the worst. The same polling had Rodolfo Hernández running third. Hernández has been called a Colombian Donald Trump as he is able to effortlessly masquerade as an anti-establishment candidate.

Had Hernández he come in third in the first round and then been dropped from the ballot for the run-off election, his supporters would have been likely to break in favour of Petro. This is because Petro is also, quite understandably, seen as an anti-establishment candidate. The Colombian elite and paramilitary were horrified at this prospect. So was Washington.

Now for the plot.

If every effort possible could be made to move Hernández up in the polls just enough to overtake Gutiérrez, then Petro might lose in the second round runoff election. This is because Gutiérrez supporters, if he were removed from the ballot for the second round, would vote almost 100% for Hernández.

In the last few days before the vote, Hernández miraculously overtook Gutiérrez, and the establishment began to taste success. It looked as though they might snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

To my astonishment, in two of the three polls conducted in the days following first round voting, Petro remained in first place! In fact, when the results from all current polls are merged, Petro is in first place, but only by a hair.

All of Latin America’s poor and oppressed are now sitting on the edge of their seats – will Petro and Márquez accomplish the impossible and be victorious in the final runoff round on June 19^th? If they are, it will be a stunning victory with ripple effects throughout Latin America.

This will include in Brazil where more wind will be put into the sails of Lula da Silva’s presidential candidacy, where polls currently have him comfortably in first place.

A long-time Brazilian labour organizer and politician, Lula ran unsuccessfully for president of Brazil three times before finally being elected president in 2002. As president of Brazil over the next eight years, he transformed the Brazilian economy, massively reducing poverty and creating an economic growth rate that was the envy of all Latin America.

The prospect of Lula’s election next October as Brazil’s president was one of my January Hopeful Predictions for 2022. I am now hopeful that I can add the election of Gustavo Petro as President of Colombia to that list.

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Daily atmospheric CO₂ [Courtesy of CO2.Earth]

Latest daily total (June 9, 2022): 420.33ppm

One year ago (June 9, 2021): 419.47 pm