Former guerrilla is favourite to be president of Colombia
Radical change in drugs policy expected as Gustavo Petro wins place in run-off against Rodolfo Hernández
A FORMER guerrilla who has pledged to end Colombia’s failing war on drugs is in pole position to win its presidential election. Gustavo Petro took just over 40 per cent of the votes in elections on Sunday, sending him to a presidential run-off against Rodolfo Hernández.
Mr Hernández is an outspoken businessman who has been compared to Donald Trump for his anti-establishment rhetoric and aggressive social media campaigning.
Mr Petro, formerly a member of the M-19 guerrilla movement, would bring a radical shift in Colombia’s drug policies after decades of failures. Colombia’s cocaine production has reached record levels and is around four times higher than when Pablo Escobar ran the infamous Medellín cartel in the 1990s.
Mr Petro, 62, has denounced the Usbacked “war on drugs” as causing unnecessary deaths and criminalising poor farmers who produce coca, the base ingredient of cocaine. He has proposed to tackle the problem by legalising the consumption of cannabis and stopping forced eradication of coca crops. He favours engaging with criminal groups through peace agreements such as the one made with Farc in 2016, which brought an end to more than half a century of guerrilla conflict between the state and communist rebels.
Under Mr Petro, Colombia would no longer send troops to eradicate coca crops in remote places where there have been violent clashes with farmers. Nor would it spray crops with glyphosate, a practice banned in several countries owing to health concerns. The government would try to wean the farmers off coca plants by offering alternative crops to grow instead.
Yesterday Spain’s National Court admitted a complaint against Mr Petro for his alleged role in the kidnap of journalist Fernando González Pacheco in 1981. The complaint accuses Mr Petro of crimes against humanity as “one of the most senior leaders” of the urban guerrilla group that had carried out “selective killings”, “bombing attacks”, “massacres” and “kidnappings” as well as “torture, cruelty and disappearances”. The journalist was briefly kidnapped for a few days by M-19 but released unharmed.
On the other side of the ballot paper is Mr Hernández, 77, who pipped Federico Gutiérrez to second place in the polls, taking 28 per cent of the votes, in a surprise result. Mr Gutiérrez was seen as the natural conservative successor to current president Iván Duque, but there is discontent over inequality and inflation.
As Mr Petro did not reach the 50 per cent vote share needed to win outright he will face Mr Hernández in a June 19 run-off.
Mr Hernández has also promised to move away from Colombia’s current anti-narcotics strategy, meaning whichever of the two is elected next month the country will likely turn away from three decades of failed efforts to contain cocaine through criminalisation.
Drugs aside, the two candidates’ policies diverge greatly. While Mr Hernández advocates a hands-off economic approach to limit state corruption, Mr Petro is pledging an unprecedented $13.5billion (£10.6billion) tax reform which would increase payments for the rich while redistributing funds to social projects and the elderly.