Colombian congressional and presidential elections - March 13/May 29/June 19, 2022

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Blank votes are counted as valid votes in Colombia.

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Petro grabs a narrow lead with 10% reporting.

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Judging from Caldas, where 20% is in, it will be very very very tight but my gut feeling is that Rodolfo needs to be a doing bit better than he currently is. Let's see...

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Petro appears to be getting the kind of numbers he needs from the Caribbean, while I feel Rodolfo would need to be doing a tiny bit better in Antioquia and the Eje. Early days still....

Does anyone know who will most likely win Chapinero in Bogota?

Fico won Chapinero in R1, unsurprisingly, and it is exactly where Rodolfo needs to win if he is to win the election. But we won't get those localities result until tomorrow.

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34.4% reporting

Petro 50.29
Rodolfo 47.48

Almost ready to call this for Petro.

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47.18% reporting

Petro 50.68%
Rodolfo 47.1%

Being a bit cautious still but I think Petro has won!

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Congratulations to my gut feeling, by the way.

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Petro 51.03% at 65.2% reporting. It's over kids. Nice and clean win.

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Turnout is going to be around 58% - pretty massive turnout, the highest besides the 1998 runoff. 22.3 million voters showed up, compared to 21.1 million three weeks ago.

Petro's victory is partly because of higher turnout across the Caribbean: +6.4 in Atlántico, +6.4 in Sucre, +5.2 in Bolívar, +7.8 in Córdoba, +4.3 in Magdalena, +7 in La Guajira, +4.6 in Cesar, +3.5 in San Andrés. Also higher turnout in the Pacific.

On the other hand, turnout was basically the same in Antioquia.

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The map is not very surprising. Rodolfo's best result is now Norte de Santander with 77.8%, given the very right-wing leaning (post-Venezuelan crisis) in that border region, while his native Santander gave him 73%. In Fico's Antioquia, Rodolfo won 64%, so he didn't quite get all of Fico's voters, while Petro grew by 9% in three weeks there, getting 33% of the vote.

Petro won with 58.6% in Bogotá, gaining over 10 points since May 29. Rodolfo won in surrounding Cundinamarca with 53.5% but Petro also gained 10 points there.

Petro's victory owes a lot to the very clear victory he won across the Caribbean: 67% in Atlántico (+12.2 since May!), 61.1% in Córdoba (where he was born), 64.1% in Sucre, 61% in Bolívar, 60.2% in Magdalena, 64.6% in La Guajira; the only weaker points are Cesar (53%) because of Rodolfo's strong support in southern Cesar, which has closer cultural/economic ties with Santander, as well as San Andrés (51% but on very low turnout).

Of course, Petro also swept the Pacific coast: 81.9% in heavily black and indigenous Chocó, 80.9% in Nariño, 79% in Cauca, 63.9% in Valle (historically a bit of bellwether and swingy... not anymore); as well as the south/Amazonia: nearly 80% in Putumayo.

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Honestly, the Rodolfo campaign during these weeks was very bad. I don't know what was the rationale, perhaps Rodolfo Hernandez did not even want to win in the first place? I don't know.

He didn't show up for the debate, he didn't campaign anywhere, didn't make any trips to the regions where he needed to pick up votes, and during the last two weeks, he spent most of his time in Miami, literally the place where he needed to campaign the least since the immigrant Miami electorate is probably the most right wing, even more right wing than the upper class neighborhoods of Medellin.

Wait, he's living in Miami, Florida, USA??? You're kidding me...  

He splits his time largely between his penthouse apartment in Bucaramanga and his country house in Piedecuesta, but he spent a disproportionate amount of time in the runoff in Miami, and at one point said he wouldn't return to Colombia because he would be stabbed (but changed his mind, ostensibly when the government gave him 'guarantees').

Of course, back in October 2021, he also apparently spent a nice time in Miami, on a yacht with some girls in bikini, as Cambio magazine revealed a few days ago.

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Nobody answered my question about Chapinero and the wealthier parts of North Bogota. Are these areas more likely to go for Petro or Rodolfo? (I didn't see any localized data yet breaking down the results by district or municipality).

I did, here .

I posted the results by locality for the first round in Bogotá (and a few other cities) a few pages back here. The results by locality will be available tomorrow, when the escrutinio is completed, and I'll share them once I compile them.

As icc guessed, I also think that Rodolfo must have won by rather unimpressive margins in Chapinero and Usaquén -- although the latter did show a pretty big divide in the first round between the very affluent neighbourhoods (Fico and Fajardo strong, Rodolfo weak and Petro very weak) and some more lower middle-class areas in the north of the locality, where Rodolfo was quite strong. I don't doubt that the very wealthy elite neighbourhoods in Bogotá voted for Rodolfo but I'll be curious to see the turnout, how high the blank vote was and how much better Petro did compared to the first round.

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Who was the shambling old guy that Petro brought up on stage furing his speech? Was that Mockus?

Yeah, that was Mockus. I'm sad to see how old and frail he looks, but I was very glad to see him there.

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Results by municipality (preconteo results)



More to say later but nothing particularly unexpected when looking at it from this basic angle: good but ultimately imperfect and just insufficient transfers from Fico to Rodolfo (I will need to drill deeper into this tomorrow to get a better idea), Petro confirms and shores up his strongholds, the regional divide remains quite important with mega-strongholds and lopsided results for both candidates.

In terms of cities: Rodolfo won Medellín, Bucaramanga, Cúcuta (with 81%, undoubtedly his best result in a big city by far), Manizales, Pereira, Armenia (these 3 quite narrowly), Ibagué, Villavicencio, Florencia, Yopal, Envigado, Itagui.

Petro won all Caribbean capitals, including 67.5% in Cartagena and 64% in Barranquilla, Bogotá, Cali, Popayán, Neiva, Pasto, Ipiales, Quibdó, Soacha, Palmira, Mocoa, Buenaventura, Tunja, Duitama, Sogamoso.

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What are those ultra leftists municipios in Norte de Santander?

Parts of the Catatumbo: very poor region still suffering heavily from the armed conflict and drug wars (it is a major region of coca cultivation). Those specific municipalities where the left has been extremely strong for several elections have a strong peasant movement (and some politically organized coca cultivators), the Ascamcat. Outgoing two-term Polo senator Alberto Castilla was a leading community and peasant leader in Catatumbo (municipality of Convención). Castilla didn't run for reelection but his group supported Robert Daza, elected to the Senate in thirteenth position on the Pacto.

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Is there neighborhood-level results available for Bogota or Cartagena?

Not yet. The official count started today and should be complete in a few days, and results by electoral zone will be released at that point. In Bogotá, the localities match the electoral zones, so it is easy to put them together quickly. In other cities, like Medellín and Cali, comunas include one or more electoral zones, so it's not too difficult to collate them. Unfortunately, in Cartagena, there are only a few big localities and matching them to zones is much more difficult (and perhaps not very instructive given how big the localities are) - you can, however, use the names of specific polling locations in each zone to locate them on a map, but this is a painstaking process. I can tell you, however, that Fico won in Bocagrande three weeks ago, shockingly.

As last time, I'll have the results in Bogotá and a few other cities up as soon as possible. Hopefully tomorrow.

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Results by localidad/comuna in Bogotá, Medellín, Cali and Manizales

Bogotá





Rodolfo wins Fico's two victories, Usaquén and Chapinero, which also become his best results by far. However, unlike in the rest of the city, turnout dropped a tiny bit there, although Rodolfo did win more than the % sum of Fico/Rodolfo from May 29, so it seems as if he did a decent job at winning over Fico's wealthy voters, and picking up some of Fajardo's support there. Rodolfo also won Barrios Unidos and came very close in Suba. Petro swept the rest of the city and got over 70% in the poor localities of the south, including 76.5% in Usme and 74.8% in Ciudad Bolívar. Rodolfo fell far short of the Fico/Rodolfo % share totals from three weeks ago in those places: did Rodolfo perhaps lose a few of his own voters in these low-income areas?

Medellín





Rodolfo wins everything but there's a clear north (poorer) south (wealthier) divide, with Petro getting over 40% or close to that in the north. Poblado gonna Poblado, with no less than 85.5% for the king of TikTok there. Rodolfo also got over 70% in Laureles-Estadio and Belén, which are quite wealthy as well.

Cali





Again the divide here reflects wealth: whereas Fico had just won the very wealthy gated communities and their racist inhabitants in Comuna 22, Rodolfo also won comuna 2, 17 and 19 which include the other (less farcically) wealthy areas of Cali. On the other hand, Petro absolutely dominated, with over 70% or close to it, in the poorer parts of Cali, even winning over 75% in parts of Aguablanca.

Manizales





I'm becoming repetitive but the patterns here are also class-based: Rodolfo won nearly 60% in Palogrande, the wealthiest comuna. Results in other comunas were more evenly matched and less lopsided than in the 3 biggest cities, but Petro generally won the poorer areas of Manizales including San José and Ciudadela del Norte, while Rodolfo won the slightly better off areas, like Atardeceres.

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To shift focus back to the thread topic, here's a belated rundown of week 1 of castrochavismo in Colombia:

The presidential transition process has begun. Petro and Duque met on June 23. The transition process in the different ministries and agencies begins this week.

https://twitter.com/IvanDuque/status/1540117342050459650

Petro's transition team has four members: Daniel Rojas, his campaign's platform coordinator; Carolina Corcho, a doctor (vice president of the Colombian Medical Federation) and adviser on healthcare issues who was critical of the government's pandemic response and strongly supports Petro's healthcare reform proposal (and has clashed with Alejandro Gaviria, former health minister who endorsed Petro in the runoff); former senator Mauricio Lizcano, a traditional politician (former senator from the Partido de la U, former president of the Senate 2016-17, ex-uribista) whose new movement in Caldas (Gente en Movimiento) endorsed the Pacto during the campaign); and Aurora Vergara, an Afro-Colombian academic.

The outgoing administration's transition team includes the finance minister, Duque's chief of staff, the head of the administrative department of the presidency (Dapre) and the director of the national planning department (DNP).


The main things in the political world now are (a) the new governing coalition, and the future opposition, (b) the election of the congressional leadership for the first legislative year and (c) cabinet speculation. All are quite closely related.

Petro on his own, with the Pacto and closest allies (the Greens), does not have a congressional majority. He obviously needs an absolute majority in both houses to ensure control of the congressional leadership (which has great power in deciding the order of the day and can either greatly help or hinder the government's agenda) and of course to pass laws and constitutional reforms.

In Colombia, under the opposition statute (a law adopted in 2018 governing the status and prerogatives of the opposition), parties must, within a month of the new government taking office, declare themselves as governing parties, in opposition or independent. They can change their official declaration only once within the government's term. The law provides certain rights to the opposition, including additional funding, access to public broadcasting, representation in the congressional leadership (second vice presidency) and the right to official rebuttals including official responses to presidential addresses (petty Duque stopped giving official presidential addresses to avoid opposition responses). On the other hand, the party leadership and former electoral candidates or independent and opposition parties cannot get government appointments.

During his campaign Petro repeatedly said that he wants to build a 'Great National Agreement' (Acuerdo Nacional), both some sort of broad-based dialogue with all sides (and other sectors of society and in different regions) and increasingly a future governing coalition. Even before he won, Petro's campaign organized the first meeting of his 'national agreement', moderated by Alejandro Gaviria. Petro wants to include the opposition in the national agreement. Most notably, Petro invited Álvaro Uribe to a meeting and Uribe said he 'appreciated the invitation of President Gustavo Petro' and that he would attend in representation of the CD.

The Greens were the first to join the 'national agreement', i.e. the future governing coalition. This is not a surprise since the bulk of the Green congressional caucus endorsed Petro either in the first or second round (as did all three co-presidents: Antonio Navarro, Antanas Mockus and Carlos Ramón González).

Late on June 22, César Gaviria, leader of the Liberal Party, put out a statement saying that the party wished to be part of the governing coalition. It was put in very old politics language by Gaviria, of course, basically saying that with regards to eventual participation in a governing coalition, they're waiting for the position regarding their "participation and political representation" from Petro - that is, 'we want our bureaucratic quotas and appointments in exchange for our support'. Gaviria also used the opportunity to send a stern warning to the Liberals dissidents who had joined the Pacto against his own will during the election, saying that he didn't care about their opinions as they had left the party. In other words, the Liberals - who, in any case, will not be in opposition - want to be in government but in exchange for bureaucratic representation and their proper place in the congressional leadership (probably the presidency of the lower house in the first year). Petro is quite pragmatic now and will likely accede to Gaviria's conditions.

The Partido de la U, which had supported Fico and been part of the coalition behind him, also has no interest in being in the opposition (where it has never really been). After the election, the party's president, Dilian Francisca Toro (powerful regional 'baroness' of the Valle), said the party was willing to participate in a great national agreement. Yesterday, the party's caucus announced it had decided to be part of the governing coalition for the election of the congressional leadership (the new Congress takes office on July 20). As for future participation in a coalition, it has left that decision for later. But it too has said it will not be in opposition.

The Conservative Party, which had also supported Fico and been part of the coalition behind him, should logically be in opposition to a left-wing government, but logic is not something that Colombian Conservatives care about. They haven't been fully, 100%, in opposition to any government since Virgilio Barco (1986-1990), and their caucus is very much a group of regional machines and other such types who require access to government money and associated benefits to maintain their political careers. Conservative senator Carlos Andres Trujillo (leader of a powerful political group in Itagüí, Antioquia), in representation of the party and the caucus, met with Petro to 'look for agreements on the fundamental' ('agreement on the fundamentals' is an old line used by the late Conservative politician Álvaro Gómez Hurtado, which is very much in vogue now).

On the other hand, the party's president, Omar Yepes (an old Conservative cacique from Caldas), pressured the party to be in opposition to Petro, underlining that it is a right-wing party with positions against the left-wing ideas of the president-elect. Former president, Lolita Express passenger and crazy conspiracy theorist Andrés Pastrana (who has had a very schizophrenic, love-hate relationship with the party for over a decade now) is also very much opposed to supporting Petro's government.

However, the Conservative caucus issued a statement supporting the national agreement and saying that they would not be an opposition party. Petro welcomed their support, saying that history would be made if the Conservative Party supported the government's legislative agenda and referring to Álvaro Gómez Hurtado's spirit in the 1991 constitution and agreement on the fundamentals. Yepes has announced that he would resign as party president in response. The most likely outcome is that the Conservatives will declare themselves independent.

No news from Cambio Radical, but pre-election they had formed a common bloc with the U in Congress. Former vice president Germán Vargas Lleras, now a weekly columnist in El Tiempo, recently wrote a column praising the 'invitation to dialogue' by Petro. He still wields significant influence in CR so the party will most likely declare itself independent too.

This leaves the CD as the only strong opposition party in Congress. All this makes for a real sense of déjà vu, a flashback to Santos' Unidad Nacional coalition, particularly in his second term (Santos' coalition included the Liberals, Conservatives, CR and La U and was supported by the Greens and the left on issues related to the peace process, with only Uribe's CD in opposition). The CD was a very effective (tough) opposition, but circumstances are different now: the party is weaker than in 2014, more divided and most obviously lacks Uribe's presence in the Senate (and, increasingly, I feel, his own interest and passion in general). No single obvious congressional opposition leader has emerged yet from the CD, but there will be a fight between top candidate (and most voted candidate in the end) Miguel Uribe Turbay, and the far-right's darling María Fernanda Cabal (second most voted candidate in March).

Ingrid Betancourt, who supported Rodolfo in the end, has also said she would be in opposition, which is terrible news for the opposition. It is unclear whether this goes for her party as well (I feel like it will, she clearly runs the thing as her personal vanity project with no discussions allowed), but in any case this will be problematic for the party's only two congressmen: Humberto de la Calle (Senate) and Daniel Carvalho (House), who are both leaning more towards being independent.

The Nuevo Liberalismo's sad and pathetic transformation into the Galán brothers support group continues. The party leadership (that is, Galán) wants to declare the party independent, after having endorsed Rodolfo in the runoff. The party's members who endorsed Petro, led by former top candidate Mabel Lara (as well as Yolanda Perea, Afro-Colombian feminist leader who was also on the Senate list in March), asked that there be instead an honest and open dialogue with the incoming government and that the party should be part of the 'transformations'. To which Galán responded with a curt statement in which he says that he's the boss and that all the decisions are to be taken by him only.

https://twitter.com/juanmanuelgalan/status/1539754664979271680

Mabel Lara and Perea have left the party. Rodrigo Lara also sent in his resignation as a member to the party, which told him that he was never a member - I think Lara did that just to troll Galán, which is pretty funny.

Under the constitution (since 2015) and the opposition statute, the runner-up presidential and vice presidential elections are automatically entitled to a seat in the Senate and the House respectively. Both Rodolfo and his former running mate, Marelen Castillo, have now both announced that they would take their seats -- I'm honestly quite surprised Rodolfo accepted his seat, given that he thinks that legislative deliberative bodies are a waste of time and stupid and that he dislikes being in Bogotá for long periods of time. Both have said that they're open to participating in Petro's dialogue, and both have said they would not be formally in opposition - which has raised the interesting matter of whether those who will hold congressional seats by virtue of the opposition statute need to be in opposition.

As for the congressional leadership now. The presidencies of both houses (and other leadership positions in both houses) have one year terms (one legislative year or legislatura, July 20 to June 20). Usually, a coalition of governing parties agree in advance to share the presidencies of both houses over the congressional term. The first year is perhaps the most important as it is when the new president's congressional coalition is supposed to be at its strongest, and when the new government needs to pass the national development plan for the next 4 years and tries to pass the biggest items on its policy agenda including constitutional reforms. In the first year, the tradition holds that the largest party in the respective house holds the presidency for that year - now, this would imply that the Pacto holds the presidency of the Senate, and the Liberals can get the presidency of the House. The former seems to be set in stone now.

After a caucus meeting attended by Petro, the Pacto agreed on Roy Barreras as its candidate for president of the Senate. Barreras is a quintessential traditional politician - senator since 2010, representative for a term before that, president of the Senate already in 2012-13 - who has been, in succession, pastranista, uribista, santista and (since 2021) petrista, and has managed to be a convincingly passionate and vocal defender of each of them. He is now Petro's ruthless and shrewd political/congressional operator, as we saw in the Petrovideos, who knows the workings of Congress inside and out. Barreras is very much a pragmatic pick: a well known incumbent with ties with other parties (and not hated by his colleagues), a guy who has already been on the government's side (instead of always in the opposition, like most of the Pacto), an inside knowledge of how Congress operates, a skilled operator who can ensure the success of the government's agenda. He is also controversial because he's very much a traditional politician with the habits, behaviour and principles of the old world, so hardly 'change'.

His nomination has led to the first public divisions in the Pacto post-election. His two rivals for the job, Gustavo Bolívar (Petro's right-hand man in the Senate since 2018, controversial and hated by other senators, who pointedly did not elect him as second vice president - the opposition's reserved spot - in 2021) and Polo party president and veteran senator Alexander López (in the Senate since 2006), both criticized Barreras' nomination, saying it was not democratic, concerted or after dialogue.

In cabinet speculation, so far it is mostly speculation. There has, however, been one official appointment, on Saturday: Álvaro Leyva, a senior Conservative politician, will be foreign minister. Leyva has been representative (in the 1970s), senator (in the 1980s), member of the constituent assembly in 1991, minister of mines (under Belisario Betancur) and failed presidential candidate in 2006 (withdrew) and 2010 (lost in the Conservative primary). But most importantly Leyva has worked tirelessly for peace since the 1980s, and developed close ties with the FARC leadership - so close that he became seen as their negotiator, or at least their preferred intermediary with governments. He played a crucial role in the negotiations for the transitional justice section of the peace agreement with the FARC. Some on the right will dislike his appointment because of his past proximity to the old FARC's leadership, but he can be a talented diplomat. Especially when you consider Duque's foreign ministers lol.

The most sensitive portfolios will be finance and defence. For finance, everything suggests that Petro will pick a moderate rather than a leftist, to reassure the markets. For defence, Petro will wait until the last minute to fill that portfolio, given the current makeup of the military leadership (far-right hawks with an old internal conflict mentality) and the tensions between the military leadership and the incoming government.

In foreign policy news, Petro's foreign policy, without even being in office yet, is already more successful than Duque's foreign policy. Not that this is very difficult. On June 21, two days after his victory, he had a phone call with Biden. Duque waited 5 months after Biden's inauguration for a phone call. Petro also talked with Nicolás Maduro, and Petro announced that the border with Venezuela would be reopened. The border is not entirely closed today, but it remains effectively closed for vehicles and merchandise, since Venezuela unilaterally shut the border in 2019 after Duque supported Guaido. Diosdado Cabello has said that he would like to attend the inauguration in August. This would be a big mistake by Petro, so I don't really see it happening.

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Ingrid Betancourt, who supported Rodolfo in the end, has also said she would be in opposition, which is terrible news for the opposition. It is unclear whether this goes for her party as well (I feel like it will, she clearly runs the thing as her personal vanity project with no discussions allowed), but in any case this will be problematic for the party's only two congressmen: Humberto de la Calle (Senate) and Daniel Carvalho (House), who are both leaning more towards being independent.

Is it not the case that the decision is taken by the members in Congress, rather than the party as a whole? In which case there isn't a lot Betancourt could do about it if de la Calle and Carvalho don't want to be in opposition (particularly as de la Calle clearly has zero time for her since she left the Centro Esperanza coalition).

Yes and no. The declaration of being in government or opposition under the 2018 opposition statute is taken in accordance with the party's statutes - I don't know for sure, and won't figure it out, but I assume in most cases that means the decision is made by the party leadership. From Betancourt's comments, she said that the decision would be made by the party in some general assembly.

Then you have the 2005 ley de bancadas, which basically regulates caucuses (groups) in Congress and other bodies so that they act in a coordinated and disciplined manner. It appears as if the Green-Centro Esperanza coalition agreement signed by all parties at the time, including Betancourt, committed all parties to act as a single caucus in the sense of the 2005 law. Semana recently had an article saying that the coalition's 13 senators decided to declare themselves as part of the government coalition, and that this decision includes de la Calle, but I have a suspicion that our favourite far-right magazine confused the Green Alliance's official decision (taken by the party leadership) and perhaps also that of the ASI (another component of the coalition with 4 senators) with that of the coalition's incoming senatorial caucus as a whole.


Petro has revealed the names of all members of his transition team:

https://twitter.com/ricarospina/status/1541782109811089409

This may give hints as to future cabinet ministers, although transition teams seem to be a rather poor predictor of future ministers.

Prominent economist and Columbia prof José Antonio Ocampo, who served as finance minister (1996-97), director of the DNP (1994-96) and agriculture minister (1993-94), will head the transition team for finance, and is widely rumored to be the leading candidate for finance minister. Ocampo had supported Fajardo in the first round. As expected, he would be a cautious and moderate pick to reassure the markets and investors.

Retired police general William Salamanca, who had previously been announced to manage the transition with the police, will now manage the entire defence sector transition - a very sensitive spot for Petro. Salamanca is the former inspector general of the police, responsible for internally investigating the behaviour of officers, and was the one who launched a corruption investigation against former police director Gen. Oscar Atehortúa which eventually led to his dismissal in 2020.

The list also includes Alejandro Gaviria, former minister Cecilia López, outgoing Liberal senator Luis Fernando Velasco, Petro's campaign manager Alfonso Prada (a santista - he was secretary-general of the presidency under Santos from 2017 to 2018), Liberal senator Iván Agudelo (close to Daniel Quintero), former Olympian and former Afro rep. (2002-2010) María Isabel Urrutia, Iván Velásquez (of recent CICIG fame in Guatemala) and Carolina Corcho.

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Not too surprisingly, Petro announced José Antonio Ocampo as his new finance minister.

He is an acclaimed economist, currently teaching at Columbia, with a distinguished career in Colombia (mostly in the 1990s) and at the UN. Ocampo, educated at Notre Dame and Yale, served as minister of agriculture (1993-94) under César Gaviria and then as national planning director (1994-96) and minister of finance (1996-97) under Ernesto Samper. He resigned early after being appointed executive secretary of CEPAL, where he served until 2003, when Kofi Annan appointed him as UN undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs. In 2012, he was nominated by a group of developing countries as a candidate for World Bank president, but he was not supported by the Colombian government (which was focused on then vice president's Angelino Garzón's candidacy to head the ILO) and he withdrew. He was on the board of directors of the central bank, the Bank of the Republic, from 2017 to 2019, appointed by Santos.

Politically, Ocampo - though he comes from a Conservative family (he is the son of Alfonso Ocampo Londoño, health minister and education minister in the 1960s under Carlos Lleras Restrepo, and former rector of the Universidad del Valle in Cali) - was on the left of the Liberal Party in the 1990s and, in his limited political involvement this century, close to the centrist/centre-left 'alternative' politicians. This campaign, as I mentioned, he supported Fajardo and was part of Fajardo's platform/policy coordination team. Ocampo is a more 'left-leaning' economist, close to Joseph Stiglitz, but widely respected and seen as a serious and cautious pick. Unsurprisingly, his appointment has been welcomed by Fajardo and Humberto de la Calle.

In political happenings, the meeting between Uribe and Petro took place yesterday. It was quite historic, in that nobody would have predicted a mature meeting between the two just weeks ago. From what has come out of the meeting, and Uribe's press conference afterwards, it was a mature meeting with good will on both sides. Uribe appeared ready to support the government on certain issues, like poverty reduction, and was open to ongoing dialogue with the incoming government. Uribe, in any case, seems far more open-minded and well-intentioned (in appearance, at least), than he ever was with Santos: I don't doubt that Uribe dislikes Petro, but Uribe probably doesn't hold any personal grudges against him, whereas he stubbornly hates Santos until the end because he is a 'traitor'.

In any case, some of the pictures of the meeting are hilarious:

https://twitter.com/kienyke/status/1542189199994019842

Particularly this one, where Uribe looks particularly uncomfortable

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I'm intrigued by the oil phase out part of Petro's platform. First off, it's very bold (and definitely leaves "progressive" first world oil states like Norway, Scotland, Canada etc look even more hypocritical) and is almost the opposite of most of the other Pink Tide nations (Correa, Morales, AMLO, Lula, Maduro etc all being pro extraction). Is there backlash developing in working class oil areas/unions? How likely is he to push through in the face of potential cost of living increases?

Yes, his energy policy is one of his boldest and most ambitious stances and is at the centre of his entire economic outlook: to abandon the post-90s neoliberal extractivist economic model and replace it by a 'productive economy' which remains rather poorly defined. It definitely sets him apart from most other Pink Tide leaders in Latin America: indeed, in his victory speech, he kind of called on the continental left to stop depending on income from resource extraction to fund social programs and the like.

The backlash will come first from investors, corporations and the oil industry lobby: his most immediate promise is to suspend all future oil exploration, as well as ban exploration and exploitation of unconventional deposits and offshore oil (and stop the outgoing government's fracking pilot projects). The plan to phase out oil, if he does go ahead with immediately ending all future oil exploration, would take 10 to 15 years.

I can't speak much to how likely he is to make huge strides in his energy transition platform - I'm not really an expert on oil and economics. On the one hand, this seems like the kind of bold and ambitious idea that Petro is famously bad at implementing (the trash collection crisis in Bogotá was a similar case, on a much smaller scale), particularly given that his energy transition and economic transformation policies are (a) still rather poorly defined (he wants to move to renewable energies, like wind and solar power, and talks a lot about how La Guajira has really strong winds, but because of Hidroituango and similar crises he is very skeptical about hydroelectricity, which is Colombia's main source of energy today), (b) would in the short-term mean lost revenues for the state and (c) depends on a lot of other ambitious promises working out (like an agrarian reform, boosting rural productivity, renegotiating free trade agreements with the US and other countries, massively increasing tourism revenues, rekindling and protecting national industry). On the other hand, it seems as if the Duque administration (which is, like all others that came before it, very pro-resource extraction) has moved to stack and lock down the board of Ecopetrol (the stock-listed oil company in which the state is the majority shareholder) and ISA (leading energy transmission company in Latin America, in which Ecopetrol now owns 51% of shares) to 'protect' them from Petro's plans. Given all this, I wouldn't be too surprised if this is one area where Petro will initially be quite cautious and conservative at first.

Most oil-producing municipalities (most of them in Meta and Casanare) in Colombia voted for Rodolfo, as they tend to be quite right-wing (uribista). Rodolfo won 52% in Puerto Gaitán, Meta (the leading oil-producing municipality), 65% in Acacías and Castilla Nueva (Meta), 68% in Aguazul (Casanare), 72% in Tauramena (Casanare), 70% in Villa Nueva (Casanare). He also won oil-producing regions in Arauca, the Magdalena Medio (like Yondó, Antioquia) and southern Cesar.

However, Petro won (as in 2018), with 60%, in Barrancabermeja (Santander), the 'oil capital' or oil port of Colombia, home to the largest oil refinery in the country (owned by Ecopetrol) as well as several oil fields (extending across the river in Yondó). Barrancabermeja has a long left-wing tradition, going all the way back to the 1930s or so when the left's weak support was concentrated in 'enclave economy'-type places like Barranca, which was able to withstand the paramilitary onslaught and massacres of the early 2000s. The main oil workers' union, the Unión Sindical Obrera (USO), is quite strong (but not as strong as it once was) in Barrancabermeja, and the USO supported Petro both this year and four years ago. During the campaign, Ecopetrol employees and contract workers claimed that the USO forced them to attend Petro campaign events.

Officially, the USO supports the energy transition model proposed by Petro, arguing that Colombia's oil reserves will run out in the near future and that Ecopetrol and the country should begin the energy transition now if it doesn't want to disappear, but they're also confident that Petro's ideas will not affect oil extraction/production in the short term. This article from 2018 explains the USO's reasons for supporting Petro better than I could - and also mentions that, in 2018, not everybody in the union was on board with supporting Petro (Fajardo, supported by the Polo at the time, had a lot of union support in 2018).

Incidentally, Barrancabermeja was one of only two municipalities won by Petro in Rodolfo's Santander, the other one being neighbouring Puerto Wilches (in the Magdalena Medio region), the location of the first fracking pilot project, which has generated a lot of local opposition which probably helped Petro (but I can't help but wonder if Rodolfo insulting the local prostitutes back in 2019 had any impact lol).

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Four more cabinet ministers have been announced:

Culture (MinCultura): Patricia Ariza (UP), 76. Poet, playwright, actress and activist. Ariza was part of the Nadaist movement in her youth, and founded the Teatro La Candelaria in Bogotá in 1966, the first alternative theatre in Colombia. She is a survivor of the genocide of the UP.

Education (MinEducación): Alejandro Gaviria, 56. More well known if you've read my posts in this thread. Economist, academic, former health minister (2012-2018), rector of the University of the Andes (2019-2021) and presidential pre-candidate in the centrist coalition. Gaviria is an acclaimed economist and academic who has worked in the private sector, public sector (DNP under Uribe's first term), academia, think tanks (Fedesarrollo) and the media. Gaviria is a very intelligent man with a strong liberal philosophy on both life (he is an atheist and has shared his experience about trying LSD) and politics - his liberalism, and his record as health minister, means he's not particularly loved by the more left-wing members of Petro's coalition (he will notably find himself in cabinet with Carolina Corcho, who is very critical of his record as health minister). But Gaviria is a pragmatic man in his politics - in contrast with Fajardo, for example. He endorsed Petro in the runoff, which was widely expected after a pre-first round interview in the FT in which he said that Colombia was sitting on a volcano and that a 'controlled explosion' under Petro was the preferable outcome. My opinion is that Gaviria is a very good choice and he most definitely has the skills and experience to be a good education minister, although his challenge will be to reconciliate his liberal vision on education with the more left-wing education program which Petro was elected on. In very random thoughts, Gaviria clearly played his cards better than anyone else in the old centrist coalition: while he is a minister, Fajardo is forever doomed to be depicted as an indecisive and apathetic guy who prefers whale watching, Galán is steering a promising party into an authoritarian family business venture and Robledo is a deranged bitter anti-petrista (Amaya is the other one who has played his cards decently: because of his political wiliness he's not going to do too badly for himself).

Agriculture (MinAgricultura): Cecilia López (ex-Liberal), 79. Veteran centre-left politician who has been in politics and public office since the late 1970s (back in the government of Julio César Turbay), serving as ambassador (1985-1988), director of the old Social Security Institute, ISS (1990-1992), environment minister (1996-1997), agriculture minister (1996-1997), national planning director (1997-1998) and Liberal senator (2006-2010). A longtime Liberal, she was a samperista in the 1990s - with a more left-wing or interventionist economic outlook, and among those who were skeptical of the rapid neoliberal economic 'opening' of the country under Gaviria's presidency. She resigned from the ISS in disagreement with the pension reform (what became Law 100, the current social security and healthcare system). She was a close ally of Ernesto Samper, defending him through the Proceso 8.000 scandal, and served in his government as minister of the environment, minister of agriculture (from which she was pushed out under pressure from the Liberal caciques of the Caribbean coast) and finally as director of the DNP. She returned to politics in the early 2000s and was elected to the Senate in 2006, and distinguished herself as one of the best opposition legislators, leading strong debates on the second Uribe administration's scandals and on issues like free trade. She unsuccessfully ran for president in 2010, but finished fourth in the 2009 Liberal primary. In 2014, she was part of the Santos government's Misión Rural, an expert group led by José Antonio Ocampo, in charge of coming up with recommendations on rural development. She supported Gustavo Petro during the 2022 campaign.

Health (MinSalud): Carolina Corcho (left), 39. A doctor (psychiatrist) and activist, she is probably the most controversial cabinet pick thus far. She is a doctor but is much more of a left-wing healthcare activist, and has been close to Petro for some time: she served in a secondary role (director of social participation in the health secretariat in Bogotá, and undersecretary for health territorial planning) under his mayoral administration. She is a longstanding critic of Colombia's mixed-market healthcare system (similar in some regards to Obamacare) and particularly the health insurance providers (EPS), which are intermediaries (and restrictive gatekeepers), arguing - like Petro - that they've turned healthcare into a business rather than a right. Corcho was critical of Alejandro Gaviria when he was Santos' health minister. She became famous during the pandemic as vice president of the Colombian Medical Federation, denouncing the working conditions of healthcare workers and being very critical of the government's pandemic response and the vaccination campaign. Uncomfortably similar to our ZeroCovid crazies, she opposed school reopenings, supported strict full lockdowns into the spring of 2021 (but hypocritically supported the protests a month later, even as cases were rising and Colombia faced its deadliest wave) and criticized the full economic reopening in November 2021. Corcho, like Petro, supports eliminating the EPS as part of a healthcare reform, so her appointment is a signal that, at least on this issue, Petro is not seeking to be as conciliatory, cautious and moderate. She is controversial because she often bases her arguments and statements on her own opinions rather than facts, even to the point of spreading disinformation or fake news (she falsely claimed that Colombia wouldn't receive vaccines from the US because the government had supported Trump). Her most famous controversy was when she basically blamed all 1.8 preventable deaths between 1998 and 2011 on the healthcare system and EPS (including, yes, homicides), for which she was criticized by researchers, Alejandro Gaviria and even the outgoing health minister Fernando Ruiz. Here is a Twitter thread by a right-leaning lawyer that went viral listing up all her controversies.

Environment (MinAmbiente): Susana Muhamad (Col. Humana). Probably the first true, longtime Petro ally appointed to cabinet so far - she is currently a city councillor in Bogotá, elected in 2019 on Colombia Humana's list, and she was secretary of the environment in Bogotá under Petro (2012-2013, 2014-2016) and briefly secretary general of his administration (2013-2014). She was also with him in his first presidential campaign back in 2010, and ran for Senate on the Decentes list in 2018 (but lost). In the city council, she has been one of the leading opponents of Claudia López, particularly on issues like police brutality. Since 2021, she is also vice president of the party Colombia Humana. She has already announced clear (but expected) stances against fracking and aerial aspersion with glyphosate.

For other portfolios, Caracol Radio revealed the likely names at this stage yesterday: https://caracol.com.co/programa/2022/07/06/noticiero_del_mediodia/1657136128_609243.html. The interior minister would unsurprisingly be Alfonso Prada, while Armando Benedetti would be Petro's private secretary (perhaps until he decides if he wants to go for mayor of Barranquilla?) and Luis Fernando Velasco will head Dapre, the presidential administrative office. The defence minister would be Mónica Cifuentes, former legal advisor to the peace process, and the justice ministry would either go to Martha Lucia Zamora (a lawyer and former magistrate who was Petro's secretary general in Bogotá) or Luis Guillermo Pérez (lawyer and currently the CNE magistrate representing the opposition since 2018). 


In party news, last week the Conservative Party elected senator Carlos Andrés Trujillo - leader of the most pro-Petro factions within the caucus and party - as the party's new president following the resignation of Omar Yepes, who had resigned in protest after 39 Conservative congressmen (led by Trujillo) announced their intention to support, or at least not oppose, the new government. Carlos Andrés Trujillo leads the dominant Conservative faction in Itagüí (suburban Medellín in the Aburrá valley) which has controlled the city for a decade now, and is also a close ally of Daniel Quintero, the ostensibly 'alternative' and 'progressive' mayor of Medellín (who was suspended during the campaign for implicitly supporting Petro). Getting increasingly strong Santos-era vibes from the Conservatives: a base and factions of the leadership which are clearly anti-government but a caucus which is predominantly pro-government. Under Santos, the Conservatives were pro-government because they got marmalade. So far, Petro hasn't given out bureaucratic quotas to traditional parties in his cabinet, although one of Trujillo's old allies/lawyer found his way into the transition team: Guillermo Reyes, former vice minister of interior and justice under Uribe (and accused of plagiarism several years ago), coordinates the transition in the justice ministry...

Perhaps it will soon be time to switch this discussion over to a general discussion thread? Not that it matters.

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Various updates:

The Liberal Party has officially announced that it will support the government. Gaviria failed to obtain any concessions from Petro, like the bureaucratic and cabinet appointments he had been asking for, although the party can always blackmail him later when he's in a weaker position. He still asserted his control over the party, managing to beat back a rebellion by some of the petrista 'rebels' in the party (led by corrupt senator Julián Bedoya). The final decision, it seems, was negotiated in part through Gaviria's son Simón, who always manages to squeeze himself in somewhere despite his lack of talent. With the Liberals, the Petro coalition has an absolute majority by the thinnest of margins in the lower house and is two seats short of one in the upper house. But if the Conservatives and the U come on board, the majority in both houses will be very comfortable. Petro clearly wants a big majority à la Santos' Unidad Nacional (2010-2017ish) rather than Duque's ragtag horsetrading in the first two years.

With the Liberals now formally in government, I feel that they will obtain the presidency of the House for the first year, as the unwritten tradition would have it. The two left-wing candidates for that spot, David Racero (Pacto) and Katherine Miranda (Green), are not withdrawing, but the other parties in Congress won't want the Pacto to hold the presidency of both houses at once. As for the Liberal that'll preside the House, there are now 5 (maybe 6?) candidates, only one of which is already a petrista. As I've said before, Roy Barreras, the quintessential political chameleon, will be president of the Senate, although Gustavo Bolívar is still mad about that and still airing his beef with Barreras publicly, which isn't a good sign for the future. Bolívar is a worthless legislator.

In last minute developments, apparently a deal splitting the presidency of the Senate has been reached:

https://twitter.com/DiegoFuerteB/status/1548077063973744643

So Pacto for the first year, Greens for the second year, Conservatives and Liberals in the third and fourth year. The first two years are when the government is most likely to have the capital to push its legislation through, while the third year is more difficult and the fourth year is a waste. Not sure what the source for the names for the three other years are, but if confirmed: Angélica Lozano would be great (Ariel Ávila meh, will need to read up the law and constitution a bit better beforehand), while Nadia Blel (daughter of a parapolítico) and Lidio García (already Senate president in 2019-20, moonlights as a vallenato singer) would be bad - although the past Congress has had the likes of Ernesto Macías, Arturo Char and Jennifer "plagiarized thesis"/"marica, ya no más" Arias...

There's another round of Betancourt vs. her two congressmen. The latter, unhappy about how Betancourt is running her party like a little dictator (and her decision to be in opposition), have formed a 'congressional committee' declaring themselves independent of the government and taken the party matter to court, asking a judge to suspend an upcoming general assembly. Betancourt has said that their decision is a 'declaration of war'. Colombia's rather Kafkaesque party laws mean that the party can hold its rebellious congressional members in a straightjacket since they would lose their seat if they resign their party membership and can only run for another party in the next election if they resign their seat one year before.

The first Invamer poll post-election (for reminders, Invamer is a regular poll carried out in the 5 big cities every few months for the last 25 years or so), Petro's favourability surges to 64% (+22) and his unfavourable collapses to 22% (-18), so it's a mighty big honeymoon (Duque never really had one). The poll also shows a (likely short-lived) burst of cautious optimism with increased trust in democracy and most institutions, a slight uptick in optimism about the country's direction and renewed hope for peace. On the other hand, it also shows that both Rodolfo (52 unfav/28 fav) and Fico (45 unfav/29 fav) are unpopular.

Fajardo's former running mate Luis Gilberto Murillo is not in cabinet after all but rather ambassador to the US, the most important and prestigious diplomatic posting. He is very qualified for this job, having lived and worked several years in the US, with political connections in DC, and even holding US citizenship until giving it up to become ambassador. Certainly more qualified than Duque's two ambassadors: the embarrassingly clownish Pacho Santos, and slimy opportunistic talentless hack Juan Carlos Pinzón.

I've written a lengthy Medium post about Petro's first month as president-elect: https://medium.com/colombian-politics-and-elections/colombian-politics-digest-i-petros-first-weeks-c569f2c0d50a

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Apologies for not keeping up with this - I was on vacation for 2 weeks until early August - but I have now written a long post about the main happenings since mid July including Petro's inauguration and cabinet: https://medium.com/colombian-politics-and-elections/colombian-politics-digest-ii-president-petro-b775be4b5028. Please read it, if you want, for a lot of details about different things.

In my impressions of Petro thus far (a week and a half into his administration), it's still largely positive but I'm starting to see the roots of future problems. On the policy front, it is quite positive: the tax reform is ambitious and largely good (could be improved or fixed in parts, but the general points are positive - eliminating all the deductions and tax breaks built in through the years for various lobbies, making income tax a bit more progressive etc.), re-establishing diplomatic ties with Venezuela is a no-brainer and a good development (even if Maduro is terrible, pretending that he isn't there is not a viable foreign policy for Colombia, and you will need him for stuff like peace with the ELN), the first hints of security policy are good (the new military leadership, talking about a big shift in drug policy) and peace talks with the ELN will be tough but is a good thing. He's already accomplished more in foreign policy/diplomacy than Duque did in four years (this is easy: Duque's foreign policy was laughably terrible, very imbecilic).

The cabinet is mostly good with some very good people who I hope will do good things (Leyva, Gaviria, Velásquez, even more petrista names like Muhamad) and but also people I'm more skeptical about (Carolina Corcho) and others who are clearly not very good (Guillermo Reyes, the Conservative quota in transport, is useless and dishonest). I know that Colombian ambassadorships are given out to talentless hacks, useless idiots and inconvenient allies, but Petro did promise to professionalize the diplomatic service... but the appointments of Camilo Romero as ambassador to Argentina and León Fredy Múñoz as ambassador to Nicaragua (ie. two stupid left-wing Greens) don't inspire confidence (I can forgive Armando Benedetti as ambassador to Venezuela since that job probably requires being held by a trusted confidante of Petro for now).

It's clear that the government's political style and operations will be much closer to Santos (i.e. pragmatic and the ends justifying the means with a good dose of 'todo vale') rather than Duque's first year (when he tried to govern without giving anything to other parties), which makes you feel a bit queasy because it involves backroom wheeling and dealing and some not so ethical bureaucratic deals and back-scratching, but that's still the way to get anything done: we've already had the Conservatives vote to ratify the Escazú agreement! You just needed to give the transportation ministry to a serial plagiarizer but whatever.

The election of the comptroller general today is dispiriting but not surprising: after criticizing past governments, particularly Duque, for coopting 'independent' control bodies to put their friends and allies, Petro has basically done the exact same thing, with his government basically orchestrating the victory of Carlos Hernán Rodríguez, their preferred candidate (at the last minute) and then putting everything in line to ensure his election with a massive majority, even including the CD. Just like in basically every past election. They criticized past governments and congresses for installing a 'contralor de bolsillo' and then did the exact same thing. They criticized the outgoing comptroller, 'Pipe' Córdoba, for being everyone's friend, and are now electing a guy who nobody knows very much about but who is very clearly another 'amigo de todos'. But this isn't surprising, that's how it's always worked out.

On the other hand, I am concerned that I am starting to see the roots of future problems, or perhaps the return of old problems in Petro. He has been slow to appoint his cabinet and even slower to appoint other people in important spots and clearly hasn't bothered to do background checks and therefore ran into avoidable problems (the continued lack of an ICT minister given that the putative appointee has a scandal, and the first head of the DNP turning out to be ineligible because of not meeting very basic constitutional requirement - he's a dual national). The transition team appeared well run but so far the government, except for the finance folks, and the presidency seem to be rather unprepared and disorganized. Petro cancelling the military promotion ceremony for the new top command was terrible optics (he can be forgiven if it's true that he had stomach pains, but his office initially said it was because of urgent meetings running late) and cannot be allowed to happen again. Petro is known for not being punctual, but he needs to change that. One hopes that this disorganization does not presage a repeat of the old problems Petro was known for in Bogotá: instability and very high turnover in his administration.

More later, until then please read my lengthy post.

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Election of the comptroller general by Congress:

Carlos Hernán Rodríguez 260 (94 S, 166 H)
Blank votes 23 (9 S, 14 H)
María Fernanda Rangel 1 (1 S)
Elsa González 1 (1 H)
Invalid vote 1 (1 S)

Read my Medium post for the long story of this telenovela. In short, however, over basically 2-3 days, the government used its power and influence to line everything up to ensure the landslide victory of their chose candidate, Carlos Hernán Rodríguez, like nearly every other government before them (except, arguably, for Duque in 2018 who didn't influence the election directly). Over this same period, María Fernanda Rangel, the putative favourite for several weeks, saw her support from congressmen evaporate entirely and, to avoid humiliation, she withdrew herself from the race on Thursday morning when she realized that she was finished.

Since 2015, the election of the comptroller general - the guy who is supposed to make sure the money is spent correctly and doesn't get stolen - is supposed to be done through a merit-based selection process but this has already been turned into a farce. This year, the outgoing Congress - dominated by the right and traditional parties - wanted to tie down the entire list of finalists before the new Congress (where the left is much stronger) had a chance to do it, which doesn't seem to be illegal but definitely goes against the spirit of the law and the constitution. However, the first list of finalists, from April, was thrown out by two courts in July, and the outgoing Congress with 4 days left rushed to make a new list of finalists. The new Congress, led by Roy Barreras and David Racero, and responding to the left's demands that the process be restarted, created a new commission to create a new list (again), which is uncharted waters legally. This new commission's new list, contrary to most speculation, ended up being very similar to the last list, with just one minor difference.

The original list from April didn't include any of the left's three favoured choices and instead included no less than 6 people who had been working for the incumbent comptroller, Carlos Felipe Córdoba, a very ambitious and cunning guy whose tenure will largely be remembered for the significant expansion of the comptroller's powers (through a 2019 constitutional reform) and the massive expansion of its payroll and bureaucratic spoils (to give jobs to the friends and pawns of the politicians that the comptroller is always friends with, even though he needs to be watching over them). Not so much for his actual ability at doing his actual job, though.

One of 'Pipe' Córdoba's preferred successors was María Fernanda Rangel, a lawyer who had previously worked for Juan Fernando Cristo and had headed some sort of 'early reaction' unit in the Contraloría. In July, Rangel emerged as the runaway favourite - by early August, the Liberals, Conservatives, CR and La U all announced their support for her candidacy and she had the votes to win. Although Rangel was initially not too badly perceived by petrismo at first, they started moving against her, led by Pacto sen. Gustavo Bolívar (who said she was a puppet of 'Pipe' Córdoba) and Green sen. Ariel Ávila (who ripped her apart in a 15 minute video exposé on YouTube, as is his style). Petro and the new government were taken aback by the four traditional parties - three of which are considered to be part of his new governing coalition - announcing their support for Rangel, and took it as an affront and a challenge. And so, from 2 weeks ago, the new government set out to defeat Rangel.

They settled on Carlos Hernán Rodríguez, a little known candidate who was included on the second list of finalists. Rodríguez is the former auditor general (2017-2019), a little-known position in charge of overseeing the comptroller - he succeeded Córdoba, and was then in charge of overseeing Córdoba (from summer 2018). He is a lawyer from the Valle del Cauca and was a departmental deputy in 2002 when the FARC kidnapped 12 deputies (11 of them were later killed in 2007). The brother of the wife of Petro's interior minister, Alfonso Prada, was among those deputies kidnapped and later killed by the FARC, so Prada and Rodríguez know each other well. He has been close to several local politicians: he served in the cabinet of Angelino Garzón (the left-ish former trade union guy who went on to be Santos' first vice president, he is a very low energy and doltish person), and was later close to former senator Juan Carlos Martínez, convicted of parapolítica and investigated for drug trafficking, and supported the 2007 gubernatorial candidacy of Juan Carlos Abadía, a controversial politician who was removed from office in 2010. Rodríguez was departmental comptroller of the Valle, and was generally well perceived for his work, and later departmental ombudsman. Still not too much is known about him but he seems to have, like Córdoba, the ability to be close to all politicians - everyone's friend: I think having friends is good, but you should not be friends with the people you must keep an eye on!

From Tuesday this week, the government's political operators, led by Prada, then started working overtime to shift the race. The Conservatives began switching on Tuesday night, once again showing how the Conservatives have become a rather close and reliable coalition partner, followed by the 16 victims' representatives who had also previously endorsed Rangel. On Wednesday, the Liberals and the U officially jumped ship as well, although César Gaviria resisted pressure for a bit, followed by the Greens, where Rangel had substantial support too. The uribista CD, in opposition, also went over to Rodríguez. By Wednesday it became very clear that Rodríguez would win and that Rangel was done. CR was the last to switch over, once it became obvious that Rangel could not win. And so, her support evaporated from 200+ promised votes to nothing, essentially over a few days.

Rodríguez won with a massive majority - 260 votes out of 286 voters: basically every party voted for him, from the ex-FARC to uribismo! Rangel got one vote - it seems to have been CR senator David Luna, who told La Silla he'd still vote for her regardless. There were 23 blank votes, a form of last-minute protest against a dispiriting election (with some steps of dubious legality): the vote is secret, although those who wanted to could announce their votes, but most of the blank votes largely came from the left and centre-left, those who actually held to their principles and didn't do what they always criticized in the past. We know Gustavo Bolívar, Jota Pe Hernández (annoying YouTuber senator now on some media-fueled crusade/frenzy to coerce every congressman to sign his bill to reduce congressmen's exorbitant salaries, if you dare question his motives he'll expose you), Jennifer Pedraza (Dignidad rep., shaping up as a pretty good left-wing critic of the government), Daniel Carvalho, Cathy Juvinao, Duvalier Sánchez, Cristian Avendaño, Susana Boreal (young new Pacto rep. who was bullied and branded a retard by all the internet sages for not knowing a procedural detail in Congress) and some others voted blank.

Rodríguez is not a petrista so he isn't quite a 'contralor de bolsillo' (a comptroller in the pocket of someone, usually the president). But, quite clearly, the government did what it criticized so often while in opposition, and they operated in a very 'old politics' way to align all of Congress behind their candidate, so 'the change' will have to wait. Now, Prada and others in the Pacto all swear that they didn't offer anything to the other parties in exchange for supporting Rodríguez, that there was no secret political transaction under the table. Perhaps, I can believe this story. I am a bit more skeptical about the Pacto saying that they supported Rodríguez because he swore that he'd an independent, autonomous comptroller...