• Elections in Colombia "Whoever wins, polarization will continue"

  • Wide Angle Mistrust and risk of shifting to the left in the Colombian elections

The surprise

that some analysts ventured in recent days was given and, for the first time in Colombia, there will not be a candidate from the traditional parties.

Rodolfo Hernández,

the representative of the anti-system vote, beat

Fico Gutiérrez,

who represented the center-right and the right and had the support of the conservative and liberal parties, among others.

The 77-year-old millionaire businessman, who had only been mayor of Bucaramanga and who paid for the campaign out of his own pocket with a very strong speech against the political class and corruption, obtained 28% compared to 24% for Gutiérrez, a difference enough to compete with

Gustavo Petro

in the second round on June 19.

Hernández also did not attend debates and became a TikTok star.

For his part, the leader of the Historic Pact,

a far-left movement,

failed to exceed half plus one of the votes, as expected.

With 98% of the votes counted at the close of this edition, the left-wing parliamentarian, 62, stayed at 40.3%, which has always been his electoral ceiling.

The same one he took out in 2018 when Iván Duque beat him by two million votes.

Although in the polls in mid-May Gutiérrez appeared as the favorite to come in second place, for about three weeks Hernández has been

snatching supporters from his rival

because the electorate that fears Petro began to see him as the only one who could defeat him in June .

A positive aspect of the elections this Sunday in Colombia, in addition to having been held without any relevant incident, is that the

Registrar

's Office , which had generated mistrust for different reasons among all the candidates, complied with the rapid delivery of the results.

One of the immediate conclusions is that Petro, who was confident of winning in this first stage, did not exceed the percentage that opinion polls always gave him and even

dropped a few points compared to some.

And for his own entourage, he overcame the one they didn't want to see in front of him.

Although there will no longer be such a great polarization since Gutiérrez is not on the electoral ticket, since Gustavo Petro's entourage had come to insinuate that he was plotting coups with the government and even ending his life, the fear that a president will arrive similar to the Venezuelan regime will remain latent.

Hence, many consider that

those who supported Fico will go with Rodolfo Hernández

to block Petro's path.

"The presidential elections in my country are the final chapter in a battle for the collective imagination in Latin America that, unfortunately for all of us, the radical left has managed to win," Francisco Santos, who was Álvaro Uribe's vice president, tells this newspaper. , ambassador to Washington with the current government of Iván Duque and current political analyst.

«The fact that Pedro Castillo prevailed in Peru and, in Chile, Gabriel Boric, to name just two, is due to a strategy of many years, with the social networks as amplifiers.

They have managed to impose a destructive narrative for democracy and authority, as well as for business and press freedom.

They say that all officials are corrupt except them;

that the media only obey commercial and fascist interests,

After all, Fico Gutiérrez was linked to the discredited parties and the Duque government, which have very low popularity figures.

In the last presidential debate, held on Friday,

Sergio Fajardo

demonstrated, with figures prepared by his prestigious economic team, that if Petro fulfilled what he says, he would need to double the fiscal reform he plans and even with it he could not finance the promises from him.

Apart from Gutiérrez, the great loser has been Sergio Fajardo and the centrism that some believed would prevail in Colombia due to the weariness of the polarization that has dominated Colombian politics in recent years.

Fajardo, head of the so-called Hope Coalition,

did not even reach 5%,

a result much lower than that achieved in 2018. Doctor of Mathematics, he started as one of those with the best chances at the beginning of the year, but he was losing bellows and ended with the worst result of his long political life.

Starting this Monday, the final stretch begins in a race between the candidate of the radical left and a lone ranger who barely has a team and who only has

Ingrid Betancurt,

who joined his campaign a fortnight ago and could occupy a portfolio in his government in case it expires on June 19.

The outcome of this first round is, therefore, the result of a confrontation that has made the atmosphere unbreathable and has sown a climate of distrust towards the electoral authorities like never before.

“The polarization that we are experiencing in Colombia will continue regardless of who wins the elections.

Whoever loses is going to shout fraud because what is happening is a crisis, not only in terms of democracy, but in terms of institutions, and that worries me a lot, ”says

Katherine Miranda,

a deputy for the Green Party, for this newspaper.

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