Guerrilla warrior ‘will fight for poor’

Colombia has elected a former guerrilla who spent two years in jail before turning to politics as the country’s first left-wing president.

Gustavo Petro won 50.49 per cent of a run-off vote after a tense and unpredictable campaign against maverick millionaire businessman Rodolfo Hernandez.

However, more than 10.5 million people voted against him in the second round, in a country with a total population of some 50 million, underscoring a potentially bumpy road ahead.

Mr Petro, 62, was mayor of Bogota from 2012 to 2015 – a stint that gave birth to unflattering accounts of his management style and alleged despotic tendencies.

He has “a very impetuous and authoritarian temperament”, said Daniel GarciaPena, Mr Petro’s adviser at the time.

A self-styled “revolutionary” warrior for the mar

ginalised – including indigenous people, the poor and the young – Mr Petro (pictured) promised to address hunger and inequality.

“He believes it’s his destiny … that he’s the only person who can save Colombia,” said a source close to Mr Petro.

The father of six embraced leftist politics as a teenager after the 1973 coup d’etat in Chile that unseated Marxist president Salvador Allende.

He joined the M-19 urban guerrilla group as a 17-yearold, but insisted afterwards that his role in Colombia’s decades of civil war was as an organiser, never a fighter.

Mr Petro was captured by the military in 1985 and claimed to have been tortured before spending almost two years in jail on arms charges.

He was freed and the M-19 signed a peace deal with the government in 1990. He has since served as a lower house legislator, senator and mayor.

In a country with a tradition of political killings, Mr Petro is no stranger to death threats and travels in a convoy of armoured vehicles accompanied by police on motorcycles, an ambulance and snipers.