'DC Colombian' squares off against former guerrilla as Colombians vote
Bogota: Colombians have voted in a highly divisive election pitting a US-educated conservative against a former leftist guerrilla, with the result set to change the course of the drug war and potentially upend the peace accord that ended Latin America's longest insurgency.
As people lined up at 11,000 polling stations to cast ballots, from the Amazon to the cosmopolitan streets of Bogota and Medellin, Ivan Duque, 41, protege of right-wing former president Alvaro Uribe, was leading in every major poll.
Preaching a tougher line on guerrillas, crime and the drug war, he has sought to paint his opponent Gustavo Petro, 58, as a dangerous leftist who would turn the country into a Colombian version of socialist Venezuela.
Petro, meanwhile, has described himself as a left-wing moderate and Duque as a far-right warmonger who would reignite national tensions. Petro's backers said they sensed a major political upset brewing in a country that has long served as a bastion of conservative politics.
"Colombia has never really had a democracy, but an oligarchy of the same upper-class families," said Fabrizio Guevara, a 26-year old graphic designer who voted in central Bogota on Sunday. "Petro offers a different way."
Duque and Petro were the top two vote getters in the first round of the election, held May 27.
Colombia is Washington's leading ally in Latin America, making the stakes high for the United States. A former senator and mayor of Bogota, Petro has lumped President Donald Trump into an axis of evil that he calls "the party of death" and has vowed a break with the "militaristic" policies of the US-backed drug war. Such a move could jeopardise almost $US400 million ($537 million) in annual aid and damage an alliance that has served as a cornerstone of the hemisphere's counter-narcotic efforts.
"With Petro, US relations with Colombia can be expected to be quite tense," said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think-tank. "Petro will likely resist giving in to Washington's hardline anti-drug approach."
Duque, meanwhile, has pledged to redouble efforts to combat a record surge of coca - the building bloc of cocaine. Educated at Washington, DC.'s American and Georgetown universities, Duque spent years living in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and working for the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank. American officials see him as a reliable partner who may bring back the controversial practice of forced coca eradication with aerial spraying, which has been banned since 2015 because of its health risks.
"You could call him a 'DC Colombian,' " said Juan Felipe Celia, a Colombia expert at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think-tank.
Whoever wins will inherit a growing problem: the National Liberation Army (ELN). The ELN was long Colombia's second-largest guerilla group, but now it is the largest, having muscled into many zones abandoned by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which signed a peace deal in 2016.
Yet additionally at stake is the future of that 2016 accord, for which outgoing President Juan Manuel Santos won the Nobel Peace Prize. Petro has largely backed it. But Duque has called for "structural changes" that some fear could deliver a deathblow to the fast-deteriorating peace process and spark a new wave of violence at a time when killings in Colombia's post-conflict zones are surging anew.
Colombians backing Duque said they supported his tougher line.
"The peace accord was a lie," said Rodrigo Pimentel, 72, a Bogota doctor who voted for Duque. "Internationally, everyone was in favour of it. But not here. How can the same people who killed so many, who were narco-traffickers, sit in our Congress?"
And yet, the peace accord was a lower priority for most Colombians than issues like the economy, education and crime, according to polls. Duque has pledged lower taxes, a tougher approach on crime and a harder line on socialist Venezuela. Petro is calling for an end to mandatory military service, sweeping land reforms and the treatment of drug addicts as patients instead of criminals.
The voting unfolded after one of the most bitter campaigns in modern Colombian history, one riddled with disinformation, distrust and unsubstantiated claims spread via social media and online news.
Last week, conservatives falsely accused Petro's camp of staging a "bioterrorism attack" when killer bees swarmed a pro-Duque rally. Fake news stories about Duque inaccurately charged that he would do away with allowing spouses to earn the social security checks of deceased partners and would issue a tax on motorcycles.
If elected, Dubue would be one of the youngest presidents in Colombian history. Early early in his career, he worked as Uribe's assistant and adviser. After studying and working in Washington, Duque was lured back to Colombia by Uribe, and Uribe helped catapult the young conservative to a senator's seat in 2014.
His victory in the Sunday election would mark a triumphant return to centre stage for Uribe - a divisive figure whose tenure in the 2000s was marred by allegations of links to deadly right-wing paramilitary groups.
As a teenager, Petro joined the M19 militant group, which staged the audacious 1985 takeover of the Colombian Supreme Court - but he has said that he never took part in armed combat. He was nevertheless arrested for weapons possession in 1985 and has said he was tortured while serving his 18-month sentence.
Petro earned anti-corruption bona fides during his time in the Senate in the 2000s, leading a charge that helped prove links between paramilitaries, drug traffickers and elected politicians. As mayor of Bogota, he emphasised psychological and medical aid for drug addicts. In 2012, he fired private contractors charged with urban trash collection, replacing them with city workers.
Ahead of the voting on Sunday, Petro - who has praised Venezuela's late leader Hugo Chavez but distanced himself from current President Nicolas Maduro - sought to assuage fears that he would turn Colombia into another Venezuela, where socialist policies and corruption have ravaged the economy and led to a health crisis, hyperinflation and hunger.
"Have they told you that I will turn Colombia into Venezuela? That I will expropriate to create a state economy? That I'm a populist?" he tweeted Saturday night. "They've lied to you."
Washington Post