Colombia elects conservative Duque as president
41-YEAR-OLD DUQUE SECURES 54% VOTES TO BECOME ONE OF THE YOUNGEST HEADS OF STATE
Ivan Duque, a populist young conservative who tapped into dissatisfaction with the economy and a controversial peace deal with rebels, won Colombia’s presidential vote on Sunday.
Duque, a former senator from the right-wing Democratic Centre party, won about 54 per cent of the vote in the balloting on Sunday, the second and last round of elections. He defeated Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla member and one-time mayor of Bogota, the capital, who got about 42 per cent.
Duque’s showing capped a remarkable political rise. Buoyed by charm and a conservative upwelling in Colombia, he secured the presidency in an election where many who voted for him did not even know his name a year ago. At 41, he will be one of the youngest presidents in the country’s history.
Far better known is Duque’s longtime mentor, Alvaro Uribe, a firebrand ex-president who delivered pummeling blows against the country’s main rebel group and drug traffickers over his eight years in office, from 2002 to 2010.
Blocked by term limits from returning to the post, Uribe now holds a Senate seat from which he wields outsize power. He founded his own party; emerged as the chief antagonist to his successor, the departing president, Juan Manuel Santos; led the charge against a peace deal with the rebels — and chose Duque, as his preferred candidate.
Duque rebuffed suggestions that Uribe would govern through him were he to win. But it was clear Sunday that the close relationship between the men helped Duque get many of the votes that were cast.
“I don’t know why people say they fear Uribe,” Delia de Rojas, 75, a widow who receives a military pension, said after casting her vote for Duque. “He was the one that put order in the country,” she said. “Now with Duque, we will have that another time.”
The election was the first to be held since the end of Colombia’s war with its main rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). For generations, the conflict was the Centre of presidential politics. Yet how the peace deal signed by Santos was to be put into effect was not often discussed in the campaign, and sometimes appeared to be an afterthought.
Instead, Colombia moved towards a new set of questions: How should the country tackle the corruption scandals? What should be done about the rising number of Venezuelan refugees? But the war carries a long shadow, and the peace deal affected the fortunes of both men on the presidential ballot on Sunday.