Peace deal in limbo as right closes on Colombia presidency
LATEST POLLS SHOW DUQUE IS LIKELY TO BEAT PETRO IN TODAY’S MILESTONE ELECTION
Colombians vote for a new president today in a milestone election, the first since a peace agreement with FARC rebels, which the conservative front-runner wants to overhaul.
Forty-one year old Ivan Duque comfortably won the first round with nearly 40 per cent of the vote, having campaigned on a pledge to rewrite the 2016 peace agreement signed by outgoing President Juan Manuel Santos.
Gustavo Petro, Duque’s 58-year-old opponent in what has come to resemble a referendum on the peace deal, wants to fully implement it.
“Whoever becomes president, the biggest challenge will be to adopt a clear position on the peace agreement because, for the moment, we are in limbo,” Fabian Acuna, professor of political science at Colombia’s Javeriana University, said.
A country without FARC
The world’s leading producer of cocaine, the country continues to battle armed groups vying for control of lucrative narco-trafficking routes in areas FARC once dominated.
Petro, a former guerrilla, is the first leftist to reach a presidential runoff in Colombia, and believes his presence shows the South American country has shed its suspicions of the left, tainted by 50 years of conflict.
“We have a country without FARC, which is building peace,” Santos, who will step down in August, said ahead of the poll.
Making peace with FARC brought him the Nobel Peace Prize, though he is leaving office with record unpopularity in a country of 49 million people.
Duque is ready to step into the breach, riding on the coattails of his popular mentor, former president and now senator Alvaro Uribe, whose two-term presidency from 2002-2010 was marked by all-out war on the FARC.
The latest polls show Duque, a candidate for Uribe’s Democratic Centre party, would beat Petro by between six and 15 points on Sunday.
A first-term senator, he has drawn together a broad coalition of support on the right, including conservatives, Christian parties, evangelical groups and the ultra right.
More significantly, he has the backing of Uribe’s Democratic Centre machine, which swept legislative elections in March.
Vehemently opposed to the peace deal, Duque says he would revise it in order to sentence guerrilla leaders guilty of serious crimes to “proportional penalties.” And he wants to cut off their access to Congress, enshrined in the agreement.
He has pledged to revive Colombia’s sluggish economy with business-friendly policies and has championed family values.
In the campaign’s home stretch, both candidates have concentrated on forming the alliances seen as critical to victory.