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

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
March 28, 2024, 07:15:41 AM
News: Election Simulator 2.0 Released. Senate/Gubernatorial maps, proportional electoral votes, and more - Read more

  Talk Elections
  Other Elections - Analysis and Discussion
  International Elections (Moderators: afleitch, Hash)
  Colombian congressional and presidential elections - March 13/May 29/June 19, 2022
« previous next »
Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 ... 10
Author Topic: Colombian congressional and presidential elections - March 13/May 29/June 19, 2022  (Read 18885 times)
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« on: February 10, 2022, 02:49:25 PM »

So here goes: the Colombian elections are coming up soon. Congressional elections and three presidential primaries will be held on March 13, and the presidential election on May 29 (with a runoff 3 weeks later).

I wrote a much longer post about the institutions and electoral system here, which I'd strongly recommend if you want a better understanding. For a tl;dr version, the bicameral Congress is made up of the Senate (108 seats, 102 are elected) and the House (now 187 seats, 181 elected). The Senate and the House members are elected from different constituencies, but essentially 100 senators come from a single nationwide constituency and 161 representatives come from 33 multi-member territorial constituencies (i.e. the departments and Bogotá), with additional constituencies like the special minority constituencies (1 indigenous in the Senate, 2 Afro and 1 indigenous in the House) and one expat representative in the House. The new thing in 2022, and lasting until 2030, is the creation of 16 single-member special transitional constituencies for peace (CTEP), which are basically seats reserved for victims (for which parties cannot run, officially) in parts of the country most affected by the conflict. These were supposed to be created for the last election in 2018, but the CTEP ended up being a whole kerfuffle which went all the way up to the Constitutional Court, basically over what the definition of 'absolute majority' is in the Senate. In addition to this, there are ex officio members in both houses: five ex-FARC members in both houses (this will be their final term), and the runner-up presidential and vice presidential candidates respectively (something created in 2015 and first applied since 2018).

The electoral system is both complicated and straightforward: it's basically d'Hondt PR, with a 3% threshold in the Senate (for the House it's either half or a third of the quota depending on district magnitude) - but parties can choose whether they run an open or closed list. If it's an open list, voters may preferentially vote for a single candidate on one list (candidates are identified by numbers, their placement on the list), and preferential votes will reorder the list (voting for an open list but not indicating a preference for any candidate just counts towards the threshold). Parties need to win at least 3% to retain their legal recognition.

The President is elected in a two round ballot. Since 2015, re-election is banned. Three open primaries coinciding with congressional elections will be held on March 14. Anyone can vote in any one of these primaries and all three primaries are coalition primaries with candidates from different parties or movements. Besides the races in each primaries, there's the race between the three coalitions to be the one with the highest participation. As in 2018, the hope/expectation is that the primaries, if they draw a large number of voters, will provide a big momentum boost to the winner(s).

For now I'll focus on the presidential election. The candidate list has kind of narrowed down and finalized - the registration period for the primaries has closed, although the official registration period for presidential candidates runs until March, so it's almost kind of guaranteed there will be more changes. It's Colombian politics, it's always going to be unexpectedly bizarre.

Candidates can be grouped into four groups: the three coalition primaries - respectively on the left, centre and right - and other candidates not competing in the primaries who want to get to the first round in May on their own.

The candidates:

PACTO HISTÓRICO (left)
Left-wing coalition formed in February 2021 spearheaded by Gustavo Petro, the runner-up in 2018 and presumptive nominee of the coalition. Composed of different parties and movements including, most notably, Petro's Colombia Humana, the older left-wing party Polo Democrático, the MAIS (Movimiento Alternativo Indígena y Social), the UP (Unión Patriotica), Magdalena governor Carlos Caicedo's Fuerza Ciudadana, the Afro-Colombian party ADA, Piedad Córdoba's Poder Ciudadano movement, the recently legally revived Communist Party, Liberal dissidents, a faction of the Greens and the friends of senator Roy Barreras (ex-Partido de la U). It defines itself as an "agreement on the fundamentals" (a famous idea of late Conservative politician Álvaro Gómez Hurtado) between different sectors of society to lead government, change power and build a new national reality based on democracy, social justice and peace. Petro has sought to build the broadest coalition possible, expanding to include politicians and groups that aren't traditionally left-wing, as he wants to ensure that he has relatively strong competition to boost participation in the primary. His critics, including some allies within the Pacto, will contend that Petro has sacrificed ethics and principles in favour of political expediency by being open to allying with more and more questionable and morally dubious people, all in order to win. As part of the coalition deal, whoever finishes second in the primary will be the winner's running-mate - so the real race is for second, to be Petro's vice president. Although the Pacto/Petro already doesn't have a great record for keeping its word with its own people so... The Pacto is running a single closed list for the Senate, with the exception of Fuerza Ciudadana which is running its own separate list.

  • Gustavo Petro (Colombia Humana/UP):Senator (2006-2010, 2018-2022), mayor of Bogotá (2012-2015) and presidential candidate in 2010 and 2018. Needs no introduction: he's a polarizing figure, an icon for the left (and a lot of his fans vow him a rather passionate, borderline cultist, admiration) whereas his opponents think he's the terrifying incarnation of all that is evil (populism, leftism, castrochavismo, narcissism, caudillismo etc.). He is a complicated figure (I'll have the chance to talk more about him): a good congressman (he's a powerful, captivating and charismatic speaker who, in the mid-2000s, courageously denounced corrupt and criminal actors including parapolíticos), but a rather poor administrator and mediocre team player, a man with laudable progressive/left-wing ideals but poor at implementing them, in part because he's obstinate and not open to compromise much but also because his ideas generate a lot of resistance from entrenched groups (the right, corporations etc.). As mayor, for example, he came in with one of the most ambitious left-wing urban agendas but left office with low popularity, a mixed and incomplete record (and the massive controversy of his dismissal from office in 2013-4, on flimsy grounds, by a far-right theocratic Inspector General, Medieval Inquisitor/book burner Alejandro Ordóñez). He's also an egotistical narcissist who thinks that he's brilliant. His 2022 strategy is somewhat different from 2018: he is still the left-wing anti-establishment candidate but is more pragmatic now, obsessed with attracting centrist liberal votes and winning over more traditional politicians (people like Roy Barreras and Armando Benedetti, quintessential traditional politicians who've changed allegiances many times over). You probably still can't win elections in Colombia without any traditional politicians, but they come with their baggage (scandals, skeletons etc.) and raises the question of how far you're willing to go - and for Petro, it's clear that he's willing to go quite far, too far for a lot of people on the left. Like in 2018, one idea that's kind of the core of his platform (and of both his appeal and repulsiveness depending who you are) is to replace Colombia's mineral-dependent extractivist economic model (oil and mining), including suspending all new oil exploration which would basically end the oil industry within a decade.
  • Francia Márquez (Polo/AICO): Afro-Colombian community and environmental leader who has gained national and international notoriety and popularity for opposing the forced eviction of her community for a mining concession and illegal mining in her native region. For her activism, she's received death threats. Her presidential candidacy has received a lot of interest and support because she has an interesting and unique profile, and is outspoken and holds to her principles, never shying away from criticizing or calling out her new allies in the Pacto (like when she was kind of screwed over and betrayed by the makeup of the Pacto's list for Senate). She's endorsed by the Polo and the indigenous party AICO and has also received support from feminist groups, like the feminist list for Senate Estamos Listas.
  • Camilo Romero (UP/ADA): Former governor of Nariño (2016-2019) and senator (2010-2014), Romero is from the left-wing faction of the Greens which wants to ally with Petro. He was elected senator for the Polo in 2010, left the party in 2012 to join the Greens, part of a group of Polo dissidents close to Petro, and finished second in the 2014 Green presidential primary with over 700,000 votes. He was elected governor of Nariño in southern Colombia in 2015, a former left-wing stronghold which elected a string of 'alternative' governors for 12 years, culminating with him. He had a mixed record as governor and since 2017 has an open investigation (collecting dust) in the Fiscalía (attorney general) for a scandal related to the commercialization of aguardiente. He insists he did nothing wrong and is the target of a political conspiracy by former AG Néstor Humberto Martínez (he's not necessarily wrong). As governor he also formed alliances with traditional politicians. He was critical of both the Santos and Duque administration, particularly the latter with whom he had public disagreements on major issues like illicit crop substitution, aerial aspersion with glyphosate and recognition of peasants' rights. Not quite sure what his main message in this campaign is besides saying that he's anti-uribista a lot. Co-endorsed by the UP and ADA, he will appear on the ballot with the label Verdes por el Cambio.
  • Arelis Uriana (MAIS): A Wayúu woman from La Guajira who is the first indigenous woman to run for president. She is little known: she was a member of the National Organization of Indigenous Communities (ONIC), and she was on the MAIS list for the indigenous constituency for the House in 2018 but finished last of the three candidates.
  • Alfredo Saade (ADA):Evangelical leader from Valledupar who joined, left and re-joined the coalition over three months last year. Saade was brought in by Petro, who seems to have been convinced that he's an evangelical leader with connections to 450 pastors and that he could bring 1.5 million votes, but there's no evidence to support these outlandish claims but there's lots of evidence that Saade is an opportunist who's played around in politics (ran for Senate in 2014 for Cambio Radical and got 1,800 votes, wanted to run for uribismo or the Christian party CJL in 2019 etc.). He's the odd man out in the coalition because he opposes abortion and same-sex marriage.
Logged
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2022, 02:50:01 PM »

COALICIÓN CENTRO ESPERANZA (centre)
Centrist alternative coalition announced last June, formalized in November and which until now has been much busier fighting amongst itself and figuring out who can join and who can't join, or wasting precious time with some pretty esoteric squabbles about the form and manner of doing politics. the 'coalition of hope' as it was originally known is the centrist coalition which basically seeks to be the moderate, 'responsible' and centrist middle ground between Petro and Uribe/the right (what Fajardo was in 2018). The main messages emphasized by its members are anti-corruption (Antanas Mockus' famous old slogan of no todo vale, or 'not everything goes'), good governance, and some kind of 'anti-polarization' (against the extremes) and anti-caudillista (promising to govern collectively) creed. It is made up of Sergio Fajardo's Compromiso Ciudadano (which isn't a legally recognized party), Jorge Enrique Robledo's Dignidad (split from the Polo in 2020), the recently revived Nuevo Liberalismo, Juan Fernando Cristo's En Marcha, the Alianza Social Independiente (ASI) and a faction of the Greens (i.e. those opposed to a first round alliance with Petro). Ingrid Betancourt's Green Oxygen (Verde Oxígeno), recently revived, left the coalition with Betancourt last week, though it remains part of the coalition's list for Senate. The Afro party Colombia Renaciente also left the coalition, but also is still part of the coalition list. After their trademark share of drama, they agreed to run two lists for Senate: one main open coalition list with the Greens led by Humberto de la Calle (2018 Liberal presidential candidate and and chief negotiator for the government during the Havana peace negotiations), and the Nuevo Liberalismo with its own closed list.

  • Sergio Fajardo (ASI): Former governor of Antioquia (2012-2015) and mayor of Medellín (2004-2007), Fajardo finished third in the 2018 presidential election. Fajardo is a mathematician, former mayor of Medellín and governor of Antioquia, who has made opposition to traditional politics, clientelism and corruption the trademarks of his political career. His 'anti-party' stance means he's disliked by a lot of politicians who have parties and find his anti-corruption independent message to be sanctimonious (and maybe hypocritical), and it also means that he's never had a party of his own. His term as mayor coincided with Medellín's much-vaunted and internationally acclaimed transformation into a new model for urban planning and innovation (an embellished image). As governor, education was one of his major priorities, although his record was less than stellar in the end. Avoiding confrontations, he is a less polarizing figure and has usually had high favourable ratings, although his favourables have dropped quite significantly since 2018. But his moderate image and general demeanour means that he is perceived as indecisive (or, worse, uninterested), intentionally vague and non-committal on many issues and quite wishy-washy. His image has been somewhat undermined by cases against him by the Comptroller General (now closed, but held liable along with several others for negligence and mismanagement in the Hidroituango hydroelectric dam fiasco) and the Fiscalía (a very ridiculous case that reeks of lawfare), and there's lots of bad blood left over from 2018 between Fajardo and Petro/his followers.
  • Alejandro Gaviria (Colombia Tiene Futuro): Gaviria is an esteemed economist/academic who was health minister between 2012 and 2018 and rector of the University of the Andes (2019-2021), and before that worked for international organizations (IDB, World Bank), the public sector, academia, think-tanks and the media. As health minister he sought to improve the system's financial sustainability by organizing centralized purchases and, most famously, implementing price regulations for prescription drugs, taking on big pharma companies like Novartis; he also took liberal stances on euthanasia, access to abortion, reproductive rights and regulation of medical marijuana. He was unpopular as health minister although this has a lot to do with the broken, corrupt and loathed Colombian healthcare system. Gaviria is a committed social liberal who is also openly atheist and has spoken about his experience trying LSD. He shares Fajardo's esoteric approach to politics, but is more pragmatic in his methods (i.e. not outright opposed to working with certain traditional politicians) and has caused controversy within the coalition for accepting endorsements from traditional politicians -- the coalition's refusal to explicitly reject these endorsements was what pushed Betancourt to walk out. He is kind of idolized by certain wealthy urbane liberal elites and was wooed by a lot of people to enter the race, which he did last August. His candidacy was initially supported by former president César Gaviria, the catastrophically incompetent leader of the Liberal Party, something which didn't please his potential partners in the coalition of hope (Fajardo and others hate/mistrust César Gaviria, and vice-versa), who forced him to choose between them or the former president, which he didn't want to at that point. César and Alejandro Gaviria had a nasty fight in November which in the end paved the way for Gaviria to join this coalition, following a 10 hour long conclave in late November. Kind of convinced that Gaviria is kind of overly hyped up by certain media and elite bubbles.
  • Juan Manuel Galán (Nuevo Liberalismo):The son of martyred politician Luis Carlos Galán, infamously murdered in August 1989 on the orders of Pablo Escobar, Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha and political rival Alberto Santofimio with the complicity of the absurdly corrupt intelligence agency (DAS). Galán's father was famous for courageously denounced drug trafficking and the narco infiltration of Colombian politics, and at the time of his murder he was on his way to becoming the Liberal Party's 1990 presidential candidate, after reuniting his dissident party (Nuevo Liberalismo) with the Liberal establishment. At his father's funeral, Juan Manuel Galán, who was 17 at the time, famously passed his father's mantle to César Gaviria, propelling him to the presidency in 1990. Now, Galán regrets having done so, feeling betrayed by Gaviria (for good reason). He has been active in politics on and off since he finished his studies abroad in 1997, and was elected to the Senate (as a Liberal) in 2006, and re-elected in 2010 and 2014, being the second (2006, 2010) or third (2014) most popular candidate on the party's list, with 75,500 preferential votes in 2014 for example. His father's legacy and the family name has made him a pretty well-known and popular figure. He ran for the Liberal presidential nomination in 2017, but he had little support from the party machinery or caucus and he insisted on an open primary in March 2018 rather than in November. The party (led by Gaviria) chose to hold its primary in November, and Galán refused to participate (or to seek re-election in 2018). Instead, he eventually left the party and began a years-long legal battle to revive his father's old party, Nuevo Liberalismo (using the precedent of the UP, revived by the Council of State in 2013 on the grounds that it had been wiped out and eliminated as a result of the armed conflict). Finally, after losing in both the CNE and the Council of State, the Constitutional Court in August 2021 unanimously voted to restore the legal recognition of the Nuevo Liberalismo as a party, as an act of reparation on the grounds that the original party had disintegrated as a result of the armed conflict following Galán's murder in 1989. Juan Manuel Galán joined the 'coalition of hope' from the beginning, but he rankled his colleagues by insisting that his new party would have its own independent (closed) list for the Senate separate from the others, dashing hopes that the entire coalition would have only one list. He comes to the primary with a famous last name and powerfully symbolic party logo (the famous image of his late father). He shares the centrist, 'anti-extremes' progressive/liberal view of Gaviria and Fajardo, as well as their (and his late father's) focus on corruption and ethics. One of his main proposals is to end the war on drugs by decriminalizing and regulation all drugs and focusing efforts on the dismantling of criminal drug trafficking networks.
  • Jorge Enrique Robledo (Dignidad): A senator since 2002, Robledo is a veteran left-wing leader and prominent opposition senator. He's been a member of the Movimiento Obrero Independiente y Revolucionario (MOIR)*, and as senator he has opposed the Uribe, Santos and Duque administrations and has often been recognized as one of the best congressmen for trying to hold governments accountable and denouncing a wide range of scandals over the years (but, as Petro enjoys pointing out, remained silent until the very end about Polo mayor Samuel Moreno's emporium of corruption in Bogotá). As a sign of his popularity, his preferential votes increased in every election since 2002, to 230,000 in 2018. Robledo was a founding member of the Polo, and his MOIR was one of the main factions in the party, particularly after Petro left. Petro and Robledo have been sworn enemies/arch-nemeses dating back to at least 2010 (the reasons behind this are too lengthy to go into detail here). In the 2018 runoff, Robledo and the MOIR, unlike the rest of the Polo, cast blank votes rather than vote for Petro, and Robledo's refusal to entertain the idea of an alliance with Petro in 2022 was one of the factors which led to the divorce by mutual consent between him and the Polo in 2020, allowing him and his allies to form a new party, Dignidad. Robledo's party is seeking to position itself as a somewhat more centrist party, and with a broader base of supporters and activists than the MOIR (its president is former Conservative senator Juan Manuel Ospina, from the old Ospina dynasty), as well as a potential governing party rather than perennial opposition. Robledo is more 'old left' than Petro and has focused on economic issues, as an outspoken critic of the neoliberal economic model and the negative effects of the free trade agreement with the United States on Colombian agriculture, manufacturing and industry, and has advocated for tariff protections, FTA renegotiation and import substitution to protect national production. He was also very critical of Alejandro Gaviria as health minister and was initially very reluctant to welcome Gaviria into the coalition given their very different political perspectives.
  • Carlos Amaya (Dignidad): Amaya, who comes from the centrist/centre-left wing of the Greens, is a former student leader who was elected to the House in 2010 and as governor of Boyacá in 2015. He was the youngest member of the House upon his election in 2010, just 25 (the legal minimum age). He had a fairly successful record as governor of Boyacá (reducing poverty, environmental initiatives like banning single-use plastics, opposing fracking, banning asbestos in government procurement and the protection of water resources and ecosystems) but also has his own political machines (the infamous maquinarias, i.e. machine politics) in Boyacá. Co-endorsed by Dignidad and ASI for his ballot access, he's seeking to represent the Greens in the centrist coalition under the label Somos Verde Esperanza.

* The MOIR is a far-left Maoist organization which stood out since the 1970s for its opposition to the armed struggle and its participation in electoral politics
Logged
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #2 on: February 10, 2022, 02:51:26 PM »

EQUIPO POR COLOMBIA (right)
Formalized in November 2021, the Equipo por Colombia (Team for Colombia) is a centre-right/right-wing coalition. It was formed by several former mayors and governors (Enrique Peñalosa, Federico 'Fico' Gutiérrez, Alejandro 'Alex' Char, Dilian Francisca Toro, former governors Luis Pérez and Eduardo Verano also participated in talks at some point), so it was also known as the "former mayors and former governors' coalition". It is also nicknamed the "coalition of experience" by one of its members, former finance minister Juan Carlos Echeverry, in reference to one of the candidates' main talking points: that together they collectively have significant experience, often leading executives. It is not running any coalition list(s) for Congress. It includes the Conservative Party, the Partido de la U and the Christian evangelical party MIRA as well as Char, Fico and Echeverry's movements, and through Char a good chunk of Cambio Radical (CR). There was loooong speculation and debate about whether or not the governing uribista Centro Democrático (CD) would join - given the government's unpopularity, associating with the CD carried a major risk but given its continued weight and potency on the right its inclusion would have had benefits in the form of votes and a unified right. The question split the coalition, and in the end it was the silent Char who broke his silence to signal his (surprising) opposition to the CD's inclusion. To avoid humiliation of being dumped, Uribe pushed his candidate, Óscar Iván Zuluaga to dump them before they dumped him.

  • Alex Char (Pais de Oportunidades):The former two-term mayor of Barranquilla (2008-2011, 2016-2019), Char is the leader and most prominent figure of the Char clan, one of the most powerful political (and business) clans in Colombia today (his brother Arturo, a lightweight more passionate about his singing career on the side than politics, was president of Congress for 2020-2021; they control the Barranquilla mayoralty since 2008, the governorship of Atlántico and have a generous share of bureaucratic quotas in the current national government). Char's father Fuad Char (the son of Syrian immigrants) is the clan patriarch, who is both an influential politician (now in the shadows but he was senator from 91 to 06 and 2010 to 2014) and successful business magnate (the family's business conglomerate Olímpica owns supermarkets, department stores, pharmacies, radio stations, a bank and more, and they also control Barranquilla's football club, the Junior). Char was elected mayor of Barranquilla in 2007 and again in 2015. After years of crisis, mismanagement, corruption and disastrous administrations, Char became the most popular mayor in the country (with approval ratings consistently above 85-90%, leaving office in 2019 with 95% approvals!) and is credited with 'transforming' the city and making it something of a model for urban development (with flashy and fancy infrastructure projects), and he has built an image as a very informal retail politician/man of the people (his trademark fashion is a threabare hat). But this narrative has a very dark, hidden face: lack of opposition, hegemonic control/influence over all institutions, a local media largely in their pocket, government contracts given out to a select number of mega-contractors with close ties to the Char (and often with their own murky, corrupt pasts like the Daes brothers) and a very traditional style of machine politics (clientelism, vote buying, alliances with other corrupt and unsavoury political clans). Char has been mentioned or implicated in a number of major corruption scandals and allegations – but despite having faced an innumerable number of investigations, nothing has stuck – Char is untouchable, at least on his own turf. These scandals include, as we've been reminded these past days, the Aída Merlano vote buying scandal which now looks to be coming dangerously close to the heart of the Char clan (besides the Alex Char-Aída Merlano love affair/weird sexting stuff, she's also accused Arturo Char of helping her escape during her Hollywood-esque jailbreak and has confirmed old rumours of vote buying and corrupt deals by the Char machine). Char's presidential candidacy, which came as a surprise to everyone in November 2021 (previously it seemed as if he was not going to run), is a very bizarre one: with his machine's power on full display he got 2.5 million signatures to qualify for ballot access in about a month (a feat which defies logic) but he's never attended any debate, given only two interviews to the media so far, held few public campaign events (though he has now started campaigning more actively), has mostly been active on TikTok showing off dance moves or sharing random facts about himself (that are irrelevant to politics but whatever), avoided facing any public questions on anything, and has rarely opined on national political issues (this isn't new, and perhaps key to his past successes: allying with every government but staying mum on most actual issues). But Char has one of the most powerful political machines in modern Colombia and while Germán Vargas Lleras can tell you that this is definitely not enough to win a presidential election, it could be important in a primary coinciding with congressional elections (when the machine vote is stronger).
  • Federico 'Fico' Gutiérrez (Creemos): Fico, as he's known, is the former mayor of Medellín between 2016 and 2019. He's been in politics for over two decades, and served two terms in Medellín city council and ran for mayor unsuccessfully in 2011 (as the candidate of the Partido de la U, backed by Álvaro Uribe) before running again in 2015, this time as an independent, running a grassroots campaign (but with financial backing from the city's powerful old business elite) and appealing both to fajardismo (with which he was initially allied) and uribismo without being formally identified with either. It worked, and he surprisingly defeated the favourite, uribista candidate Juan Carlos Vélez Uribe, by just 9,500 votes. Fico was very popular throughout his term with approvals consistently around 80% (but not popular enough to have his dauphin elected in 2019), a popularity that had a lot to do with his upfront style/showmanship, folksy populism and omnipresence (in the media and online). His administration spent an ungodly amount of money on vain self-promotion including an hour-long weekly TV program and the creation of fake social media accounts to boost his online image. His priority as mayor (and major talking point as presidential candidate) was security and fighting organized crime with a hardline strategy (targeting top criminal leaders) but his record on this was very poor (homicide rates and other indicators worsened), and his record in other areas was also quite mediocre. Which goes to show that he's a good snake oil salesman. He's a very ambitious politician and since 2018 his rhetoric has shifted much more markedly to the right. Given his longstanding sympathies for uribismo and ties to certain uribista factions, Fico is seen as Uribe's Plan B option, something which both Uribe and Fico have denied for now as Fico is currently focused on replaying his 2015 campaign playbook (receiving politicians' support at the end). His campaign has repeatedly attacked Petro as Fico desperately seeks to consolidate himself as the anti-Petro candidate, and in that regard he has made a bunch of slimy comments (saying that it seem Petro hadn't demobilized, referring to his past in the M-19) or dumb remarks (that Petro is more dangerous than the Delta variant... so I guess Petro is Omicron? Or BA.2?).
  • Enrique 'Kike' Peñalosa (Partido de la U): Peñalosa is the former two-term mayor of Bogotá (1998-2000, 2016-2019) and a career politician who's run in 10 of the 16 national or local electoral cycles since 1990, including three previous presidential bids (an aborted one in 2006, a primary defeat in 2010 and a first round defeat in 2014) and 6 mayoral runs in Bogotá. On his third attempt, Peñalosa was elected mayor in 1997. The main legacy of his first term, which is his cherished baby (a baby that is now hated by everyone else & seen as a real piece of sh**t), is Bogotá's TransMilenio BRT system. The cornerstone of Peñalosa's urban vision is public spaces and infrastructure (parks, public transit, libraries, bike lanes), which in his mind foster equality, because they are shared by people from all social backgrounds; on the other hand, his vision has often ignored deeper structural causes of inequality and poverty, he has pushed for 'clean and open public spaces' at the expense of marginalized groups (homeless, informal vendors, drug addicts) and his vision is also very much based around aesthetics. Peñalosa left office with high popularity, which gave him national ambitions, but so far all of his attempts at becoming a national political figure have failed (his presidential candidacy for 2006 was aborted in 2005 by Uribe's re-election, a 2006 attempt at running for Senate with his own list failed, he lost the 2010 Green primary to Mockus, and though he came out of the 2014 Green primaries as the big winner with 2 million votes his general election campaign was terrible and ended up with just 8.3%), all confirming that he's not a good politician and campaigner. After another two defeats locally (in 2007 and 2011), Peñalosa - an implacable opponent of Petro - returned in 2015, promising to be a 'builder' and efficient 'manager', a new direction after three left-wing administrations and benefiting from Petro's unpopularity then. But his second term was pretty disastrous: beyond computer renders, he failed to deliver any big tangible infrastructure projects, although his main legacy will be finally awarding the contract for the metro in October 2019, although not without several more delays, a lot of controversy (he scrapped Petro's underground metro for an elevated line dependent on TransMilenio feeder routes). He was hurt by his arrogant and aloof tone, his inability to communicate his goals or achievements with the public, a large number of gaffes, bizarre moments (like the time he got lost in the woods) and weird/stupid statements, incessant bickering with Petro, getting bogged down in damaging controversies (like unpopular tree felling, or falsely claiming to have a doctorate and master’s) and his comms strategy was like reaaaaly bad. His approval ratings were underwater during his entire term, and never went above 35%. All that hasn't stopped him from thinking he can be president, somehow. Peñalosa was unable to collect enough signatures to get on the ballot as an independent (which is kind of hilarious), so he was forced to seek a party's endorsement, getting it from the Partido de la U. Peñalosa is a right-of-centre liberal (basically), he isn't an uribista, but he has longstanding connections with uribismo.
  • David Barguil (Conservative):Barguil is a senator (2018-2022) and former two-term representative (2010-2018) from Córdoba. He owes his rise in politics to the powerful Conservative García Pineda clan in Córdoba (led by senator Nora García Burgos and her son, the former two-term mayor of Montería Marcos Daniel Pineda), but he broke with them in 2018 to run for Senate on his own terms in 2018, winning with nearly 140,000 votes, the most of any Conservative candidate in 2018. As congressman, he made a name for himself as a leading critic of banks and the financial sectors' abuses and defender of consumers' rights, sponsoring and supporting several pieces of legislation in these areas including an amendment to the 2019 tax reform which created a temporary surtax on banks. But he also had one of the worst attendance records in Congress (in 2014-18), accused of missing over 70 plenary sessions, allegedly with false medical excuses (but he has won two cases, in the Council of State and Supreme Court, on these accusations). Barguil has been a close ally of the government and, like his party, has greatly benefited in return, with bureaucratic quotas in the agriculture ministry and friends with the environment minister (a former Conservative mayor of Montería), he's also the cousin of the ombudsman and was married until 2018 to César Gaviria's daughter. He was selected as the Conservative Party's candidate in November 2021 with strong support from his friends in the caucus. Barguil is campaigning on a right-wing platform espousing traditional small-c conservative (and uribista) issues like security/criminality and family – he showed up to a debate wearing a "no left turn" t-shirt and has adopted a tough guy routine. Barguil also points to his fight 'against the giants' - a bit disingenuous given that he's the candidate of a party with many corrupt giants, and indeed his strategy for the primary relies heavily on the Conservatives' network of clientelist clans and machines turning out for him as the primary coincides with the congressional elections in which these same machines play their future.
  • Aydeé Lizarazo (MIRA): A one-term senator (since 2018) from Quindío, Aydeé Lizarazo is the candidate of the Movimiento Independiente de Renovación Absoluta (Independent Movement of Absolute Renovation, MIRA), a confessional party that is the political wing of the Christian evangelical Church of God Ministry of Jesus Christ International. Although it historically did not align with either the government or the opposition, since 2018 the MIRA has been aligned with the right, endorsing Iván Duque in the 2018 election and supporting his government. Lizarazo was third on the MIRA's open list for the Senate in 2018, and was elected to the party's third and last seat with over 57,000 preferential votes.
Logged
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2022, 02:53:10 PM »

CANDIDATES OUTSIDE OF COALITIONS

  • Óscar Iván Zuluaga (CD): Zuluaga was the uribista candidate in 2014, losing to Santos in the runoff, and is once again the CD candidate in 2022, but uribismo in 2022 is more unpopular, weaker, divided, more isolated and perhaps more radicalized. As I noted, Zuluaga didn't join the Equipo por Colombia coalition, with Uribe preferring to dump them preemptively to avoid being the humiliated dumpee (this decision apparently was opposed and not well received at all by Iván Duque, but nobody pays attention to that idiot anymore). Zuluaga is a career politician from Pensilvania (Caldas) who has been councillor (1988-1990), mayor of Pensilvania (1990-1992), senator (2002-2006) and finance minister under Uribe (2007-2010). He has been a loyal ally of Álvaro Uribe since they met in the 1990s, and was an early supporter of Uribe's 2002 presidential campaign. His senatorial candidacy in 2002 was endorsed by a 'party' which was used by the paramilitaries to elect their preferred candidates that year, and Zuluaga's name was mixed up in parapolítica (but no charges were held against him). He was finance minister through the Great Recession, which largely spared Colombia. He was a founding member of the Partido de la U in 2005 when it was meant to be the new uribista party, and then a founding member of the CD, receiving the party's 2014 presidential nomination in October 2013. His 2014 candidacy was very slow to start, but finished strong and he surprised everyone, notably Santos, by winning the first round with 29.3% against just 25.7% for the sitting president. He was defeated in the runoff by 900,000 votes, getting 44% of the vote. He has two ghosts from his 2014 campaign, although he was legally cleared in both: the 'hacker scandal' (a hacker in the campaign provided classified military intelligence information about the peace process to Zuluaga's campaign), which Zuluaga insists was a vile set-up by Santos and the then-AG to 'steal' the election; and the Odebrecht scandal (Odebrecht paid Brazilian political strategist Duda Mendonça an extra $1.6 million for his work on Zuluaga's campaign). The Odebrecht scandal revelation in early 2017 sank Zuluaga's putative 2018 candidacy, and he was hung out to dry by his own colleagues, including Uribe, who unceremoniously threw him under the bus as soon as the Fiscalía confirmed the allegations, forcing him to 'postpone' his candidacy. When the useless CNE cleared his name in October 2017, Zuluaga was barred from returning to his candidacy by Uribe, who shut the door in his face. After this, Zuluaga kind of dropped out of circulation, and only returned in 2021, during the national protests. He started making proposals on how to manage the crisis, particularly on economic issues (his supposed area of expertise), but because no Colombian politician disinterestedly makes ‘proposals’ on political issues like that, it was obvious that Zuluaga was planning a comeback for 2022. He announced his candidacy last August and defeated four other candidates in an internal poll released in late November 2021. Zuluaga comes with baggage but he's the least worst option for a party in a bad situation: he has broad support and acceptability within the party, is more moderate and pragmatic than his other internal rivals (like batsh**t insane far-right lunatic María Fernanda Cabal and deranged Uribe cultist Paloma Valencia), but he definitely doesn't represent renewal and isn't a fresh face (his attempts to appear as such, like wearing jeans and sneakers, or joining TikTok, have a really cringe "how do you do, fellow kids" vibe to it). Not being in any coalition, he faces a real uphill battle and must improve his numbers before March because there's a good chance that Uribe might calculate that it's better to dump him and ally with someone else who is a better position to defeat Petro in June. For now, the CD has radicalized its message to remotivate its core electorate for the congressional elections.
  • Rodolfo Hernández (Liga de Gobernantes Anticorrupción): 76-year-old Rodolfo is a entric and foul-mouthed businessman-turned-mayor of Bucaramanga in 2015 and now TikTok star/upstart presidential candidate. Hernández is a businessman who founded a construction company in the 1970s and got rich by building new developments and residential properties for lower-income families around the country. He had a keen interest in politics but little time for the formalities and rituals of it all; he financed the winner's campaign in the 2011 local elections in Bucaramanga and while the winner did treat him well in return, he didn't fulfill what Hernández wanted out of him, so he broke with him and started his own quixotic, self-funded barebones mayoral campaign with a strident anti-corruption and anti-politics discourse. It was an atypical campaign, without any political or machine support, ran out of his own apartment: his movement was named 'Logic, Ethics and Aesthetics', its logo was the Pi symbol, it was built on Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative and the ideologue behind him was his brother (a Kantian philosopher and semiotician; they had a falling out after just 6 months in office and are no longer close). But he also mixed anti-politics with cheap populist tricks, like a controversial pledge in notarized letters to build 20,000 'happy houses' for low-income households, something which obviously never happened. Hernández unexpectedly won the 2015 election, defeating the candidate of the ruling and hitherto dominant Liberal Party (and its machines) and other candidates backed by powerful political bosses. As mayor he continued to behave as a candidate: he had a weekly Facebook livestream in which he doubled down on his anti-corruption creed, repeatedly attacking his predecessor for 'stealing' and ruining the city, fighting constantly with traditional politicians, calling his opponents all kinds of names and insults, and using the attacks on 'thieves'/politicians/'the mafias' to deflect blame or questions about his own record. He actually kind of kept his word on fighting corruption and made positive changes to improve transparency and abolish clientelist patronage, but he seemed to be far less interested at managing day-to-day issues and didn't really keep a lot of his more ambitious promises. The major black mark on his anti-corruption rhetoric, for which he faces disciplinary and corruption charges, is a controversial trash scandal: he directly awarded (but later rescinded) a 30-year $250 million contract for the city's waste management to a company which was disqualified (over a minor technicality) and is accused of having pressured the municipal waste company hire a consultant, who had ties to Vitalogic lobbyists, to design technical specifications for the contract and his son was paid to lobby on the company's behalf. Rodolfo is known for his brash, coarse and vulgar style, and a long list of controversial statements (calling firefighters 'fat potbellies', pejorative comments about Venezuelan migrant women, saying that he was a follower of a "great German thinker, Adolf Hitler") and, most famously, slapping a councillor in the face in 2018. The Procuraduría provisionally suspended him for the slap, and Rodolfo took advantage of the disciplinary sanctions to appear as a victim of the system and in Sept. 2019, when he was suspended for a second time by the Procuraduría – this time for political participation – he chose to resign from office to openly campaigned for his candidate, Juan Carlos Cárdenas. With Hernández's support, Cárdenas won decisively (but they've since broken and Hernández says he was betrayed and deceived by his successor, who he has called a drunk) and Hernández's new movement, the Liga de Gobernantes Anticorrupción (Liga) placed first in Bucaramanga in both the city council and departmental assembly elections. Rodolfo's presidential ambitions have been obvious since 2019 at least, and now he's turned into a viral but enigmatic phenomenon – he's second behind Petro in most polls now, and with room to grow. He presents himself as an engineer and candidate of the people, capitalizing on indignation with corruption and corrupt traditional politicians/politiquería and his entire campaign is almost entirely based around fighting corruption and the simplistic (populist) premise that everything (notably poverty, his other main focus) will be fixed by "collecting the check books" from politicians and "stopping the stealing". He is self-funded, only has a very small campaign team, relies on Facebook and TikTok instead of large campaign events (he wants to stay in Bucaramanga) but everyone wants to be with him, though he doesn't want to be with anyone. He's been wooed by the left and right, some saying he's close to Petro, while others say he and Uribe are plotting a future alliance, some think he's left-wing but others think he's a far-right Trumpian demagogue (already, back in 2015, his campaign was supported by both Álvaro Uribe and parts of the left, informally). He seems to relish the confusion. His Liga – a barebones movement that has nothing other than his name – was only able to put together one list, for the House in Santander. Given that the winners of the March primaries are expected to get a momentum boost (like in 2018), can Rodolfo Hernández's current momentum survive that, or is he just a flash in the pan?
  • Íngrid Betancourt (Green Oxygen):Ingrid Betancourt is internationally famous for being kidnapped by the FARC in February 2002 and being held hostage in the jungle until she was rescued in a military operation in July 2008. She is the daughter of a Conservative politician, and she lived several years in Paris and her first husband was French, and she has French citizenship. She entered politics in the 1990s, elected as a Liberal to the House from Bogotá in 1994, where she became one of the most prominent opponents of President Ernesto Samper with the Proceso 8,000 (the Cali Cartel financing of the Samper 1994 campaign), going on a hunger strike until she passed out. She left the Liberal Party and formed the Green Oxygen party to run for Senate in 1998, winning with the most votes of any candidate in the country (over 150,000), with a strong anti-corruption rhetoric. She supported Andrés Pastrana's presidential candidacy but broke with him when he didn't keep his promise to push forth a real political reform. In her first political career, she had a direct and irreverent tone to denounce corruption and used symbolic forms to draw attention to corruption (distributing condoms, saying corruption was the AIDS of politics, and Viagra to stop the corrupt), but she wasn't always popular: her second book was originally published in French and was not well received by everyone in Colombia. She ran for president in 2002 and never had much of a chance. She was kidnapped by the FARC as she travelled into the recently 'retaken' zona de distensión (the DMZ that Pastrana created for doomed peace talks with the FARC), and held hostage for years in the jungle. She was one of the most famous victims of the FARC and the French government made repeated efforts and put lots of pressure on Colombia to have her released (in Wikileaks cables, there's a great claim that Sarkozy wanted to meet with Manuel Marulanda!). She was finally rescued by the Colombian military in a movie-like rescue operation, Operación Jaque, in July 2008. She spent several years in France after her liberation and met with several world leaders, but again attracted criticism back home in 2010 when she tried suing the state for damages for her time in captivity. She only returned to Colombian politics in 2018 - when she endorsed Petro in the runoff - and in 2021. Her political party, Green Oxygen, was revived in 2021 on the basis of the Constitutional Court's revival of Nuevo Liberalismo. Betancourt facilitated and mediated the creation of the centrist coalition, and was a key mediator at the famous conclave in November 2021, but she didn't seem interested in a presidential candidacy of her own: indeed, she gave her party's endorsement to Amaya and Fajardo. However, without telling anyone beforehand (including her colleagues in the coalition), she announced her candidacy on January 18. Shortly afterwards, she had a strong clash with Alejandro Gaviria during a live debate, calling him out for having received the endorsements of two traditional politicians. She demanded that the coalition take a strong position and reject these endorsements, and set an ultimatum (and then a second one). Not satisfied by the coalition's compromise response, she withdrew from it - a decision which has definitely left some of her old allies quite bitter (notably Humberto de la Calle, endorsed by her party, and who could find himself legally banned from supporting any other presidential candidates besides Betancourt). No one came out strong from this (and Betancourt showed her disconnection from reality/lack of knowledge in that terrible RCN interview in which she asked which candidates had machines). Betancourt still has a powerful and captivating life story and an anti-corruption message (she says that the country is 'held hostage' by it).
  • Luis Pérez (Colombia Piensa en Grande): Pérez is a quintessential traditional populist politician who has been governor of Antioquia (2016-2019) and mayor of Medellín (2001-2003) and whose presidential candidacy hasn't gotten much attention, but stirred a lot of controversy on the left in late November when there was talk of him joining the Pacto Histórico (with Petro's acquiescence), something which did not materialize in the end and which means that, for now, he is continuing his presidential candidacy until the first round on his own. Pérez is a Liberal politician who was elected mayor of Medellín in 2000. He likes saying that "doing rich people public works for the poor gives results" and as mayor he started several important infrastructure projects, created a public bank offering financing to the poor for start-up business initiatives and froze utility rates for two years. But he faced a lot of criticism for politicizing the public utility company (EPM, Medellín's 'crown jewel'), wasteful spending and persistent rumours of corruption which earned him the nickname Luis XV (referring to the 15% he allegedly charged on public contracts). Most controversial is his role in Operation Orion (which took place during his term in October 2002), a military operation against the urban militias of the FARC/ELN in Medellín's Comuna 13. The largest urban military incursion in Colombia, Operation Orion left the civilian population caught in the crossfire, led to human rights violations including forced displacements, disappearances and extrajudicial assassinations. The operation was carried out in complicity with Don Berna's paramilitaries (indeed, the operation led to the consolidation of paramilitary control in that part of Medellín). The operation was ordered by President Uribe, but Pérez as mayor was accused of supporting a very authoritarian and militarist vision, and Pérez still defends Operation Orion today, referring to it as the 'pacification' of Comuna 13. Pérez tried to return as mayor in 2007 (losing to Alonso Salazar, Fajardo's candidate) and 2011 (losing to Aníbal Gaviria, a Liberal also supported by Fajardo), both times as an independent but with substantial support from the machines of many parties. In 2007, he campaigned promising local public works (parks, football fields etc.) in exchange for votes from the neighbourhood, and in 2011 he was accused by incumbent mayor Alfonso Salazar of having received support from demobilized ex-paramilitary gangs in 2007 and 2011. He was elected governor of Antioquia in 2015, with the endorsement of the Liberal Party and CR, winning 39.5% against 29.6% for the uribista candidate. Pérez is a political opportunist who has made friends and connections in all parties: he was Juan Manuel Santos' campaign manager in Antioquia in both 2010 and 2014, his 2015 gubernatorial campaign collected the backing of various machines (including from some very controversial and unsavoury people) and as governor he returned the favour by giving these machines their share of bureaucratic 'quotas'. His governorship had fewer controversies than his mayoral term years before, but faced more rumours about corruption schemes (as he made greater efforts, even if only superficial, to appear tougher on corruption by his own public servants) and criticisms over his management of the Hidroituango crisis in 2018. As governor and now as presidential candidate his motto has been 'thinking big', selling himself as a visionary offering long-term ideas - as governor, he (unsurprisingly) didn't accomplish many of these overly ambitious ideas, and as presidential candidate his visionary ideas mostly seem to be populist promises (reducing VAT from 19% to 6%) or unserious silly stuff (sending all corrupt politicians to Gorgona Island). Pérez, again, is a political windvane. He's not uribista (and Uribe has never been a huge fan of him), but had clear uribista sympathies when that was politically beneficial: his nephew was elected as a CD senator in 2018 and as recently as 2019, he wrote an embarrassingly sycophantic book (with public money) heaping praise on Uribe and professing his 'affection and admiration' on a man he describes as a 'soldier of argumentation'. Now, however, he's flirting with the left - Pérez is close to the controversial incumbent left-leaning populist-ish mayor of Medellín Daniel Quintero, while Petro is obsessed with winning over Liberals and desperate to win support in Antioquia (where he did very poorly in 2018). In addition, Pérez's political enemy is Sergio Fajardo. In November, Pérez wanted to have César Gaviria's Liberal Party choose a candidate (i.e. him) to compete in the Pacto's primary in March, something which Gaviria didn't like and refused (it is unlikely that César Gaviria will make alliances with anyone until after the primaries, at the earliest). The controversy his name generated on the left ultimately meant that Luis Pérez didn't join the Pacto, but he is undoubtedly still cooking up something with Petro. Pérez's presidential candidacy has ballot access by having collected over 1 million signatures, so he can appear on the first round ballot.
Logged
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #4 on: February 10, 2022, 02:53:47 PM »
« Edited: February 10, 2022, 10:08:02 PM by Hash »

  • Luis Gilberto Murillo (Colombia Renaciente): Murillo is a former environment minister (2016-2018) during Juan Manuel Santos' second term and a former governor of Chocó (1998-1999, 2012) who is the candidate of Colombia Renaciente, a political party born as an Afro-Colombian party which was initially part of the centrist coalition (and still is, at least for the congressional lists). Murillo announced his candidacy late, in mid-January (basically at the same time as Betancourt), which took the coalition by surprise, and he withdrew from the coalition two days later, saying that the coalition wanted to restrict the number of candidates (which was a proposal by Juan Manuel Galán given the proliferation of candidates in the coalition at the time) and kind of implied that racism was behind that. Murillo is a mining engineer (who studied in Moscow in the late 1980s), who after being director of the regional environmental authority in Chocó (Cordechocó) and working in Mockus' administration in Bogotá, was elected governor of Chocó in 1997. However, his election was overturned by the Council of State in a recount in 1999. After being kidnapped by the paramilitaries in 2000, he went into exile in the US, where he worked for NGOs and advocating for Afro-Colombians and Latinos; since then he's maintained many connections in the US (including with the Congressional Black Caucus). He returned to Colombia and was elected governor of Chocó in 2011 with Cambio Radical (CR) in coalition with the Conservatives, the Greens and ASI. He was seen as a fresh face, distant from the dominant corupt and criminal-linked political clans of Chocó, and promised to clean up public finances, strengthen institutions and fight corruption. But his opponents challenged his election, arguing he was ineligible for office because back in 1997, Murillo had been sentenced to 6 months imprisonment for embezzlement - misusing public funds for a different purpose when he was director of Cordechocó (funds destined for an environmental program were used to repair a school). The issue became a protracted and complicated (and somewhat absurd) legal mess, until the Council of State suspended him in November 2012 (and later nullified his election). In 2014, Santos appointed Murillo as coordinator of the Plan Pazcífico, the government's investment plan for the social, economic and security crisis in the Pacific region, Colombia's poorest region. In April 2016, during a cabinet shuffle, Murillo became Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, representing Vice President Germán Vargas Lleras' CR. As environment minister, he oversaw the creation of the carbon tax, the adoption of a climate change law in 2018, the creation of an emissions trading scheme and the protection of all 37 páramos ecosystems. He also was the government's representative in negotiations during the civic strike in Chocó in May 2017, and although an agreement was reached after 18 days of protests, he was criticized by distrustful local protesters who felt that he had little power and had been sent as a token black by the government (some event branded him a sellout or traitor). Murillo left CR in late 2017, after CR withdrew from the governing coalition, and remained in cabinet until the end of Santos' term in August 2018. In 2019, he became one of the leaders of Colombia Renaciente, a party which obtained recognition as an Afro-Colombian 'ethnic' party (as the community council Playa Renaciente) by winning one of the two Afro seats in 2018 (held by the party's leader John Arley Murillo, unrelated by supported by Murillo in 2018). In 2019, renamed to its current name, it sought to become the base of a broad centrist pro-peace front and attracted a lot of former Santos cabinet ministers (so it became known in the media as the afro-santista party), except that because nothing ever works out as planned in Colombian politics, it ended up in arcane internal conflicts between different factions which ended in the purge of many of the santistas less than 6 months later. Murillo's campaign wants to represent "the other Colombia, the deep Colombia", referring the marginalized ethnic minorities (Afros and indigenous) and peripheral regions, and focuses on issues like implementing the peace agreement and environmental protection.
  • John Milton Rodríguez (Colombia Justa Libres): Christian evangelical pastor, self-proclaimed apostle and the most prominent senator (since 2018) of the evangelical/Christian right party Colombia Justa Libres (CJL), although currently kept busy by a legal dispute within the party. Rodríguez is an evangelical pastor from Cali and founder of the evangelical church Misión Paz a la Naciones, which claims 25,000 faithful and 32 branches in the country. Rodríguez, the apostle, and his wife, the prophet, founded the Misión Paz in 1999 and they also own a university, a foundation (which has obtained public contracts), two non-profit corporations incorporated in Florida and a foundation registered in Panama. Part of the 'apostolic group' of evangelical churches which actively participate in politics, Rodríguez had supported candidates in past elections, he gained prominence in 2016 as one of the leading evangelical supporters of the No during the peace plebiscite. After the plebiscite, Rodríguez represented the evangelicals in the renegotiation talks (alongside senior right-wing and uribista politicians). In 2018, Rodríguez ran for Senate as the top candidate for Colombia Justa Libres, a new party formed in 2017 by different evangelical churches/leaders. In the final recount of votes, CJL narrowly crossed the 3% threshold with over 430,000 votes and won three seats in the Senate, plus a seat in the House in Bogotá. CJL and Rodríguez endorsed Duque in 2018 and have remained relatively loyal members of his governing coalition in Congress. As senator, he has been a member of the 'pro-life caucus' in the Senate and his main issues have been the usual Christian right causes - opposition to abortion, euthanasia, LGBT rights (same-sex marriage and adoption) and support for religious freedom. He strongly opposes imposing taxes on churches, and opposed a 2021 law which outlawed corporal punishment, arguing it was unconstitutional. During the pandemic, he was among the Christian leaders who lobbied the government to reopen churches during the initial lockdown. Rodríguez announced his presidential candidacy in August 2021 but CJL is deeply divided: Rodríguez's nomination at a convention was not recognized and challenged by the co-president of the party, Ricardo Arias (former senator and leader of the Libres faction of the party), who claims that he controls the party and therefore Rodríguez doesn't have the party's support (and Arias has indeed proclaimed his own candidacy). Unable to register his candidacy, Rodríguez has taken the matter to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and has now denounced a mysterious plot to block his candidacy and an alleged 'financial arrangement' by Arias to illegally access information to hurt Rodríguez's campaign. CJL is running in coalition with MIRA in the congressional elections, and both parties had initially planned to hold their own presidential primary.
  • Enrique Gómez Martínez (MSN): Gómez is the grandson of former Conservative president Laureano Gómez (1950-1951) and the nephew of assassinated Conservative politician and three-time presidential candidate Álvaro Gómez Hurtado (killed in 1995). Gómez Martínez has been the family's lawyer in Gómez Hurtado assassination case - declared a crime against humanity in 2017. The FARC admitted responsibility for Gómez Hurtado's assassination in 2020, but this version has been questioned by some, including the family, who consider the assassination to be a state crime directed by Ernesto Samper and Horacio Serpa (and therefore claim that the FARC lie to divert attention and prematurely close the case). Now he is the family's political heir, with Gómez Hurtado's political movement, the National Salvation Movement (Movimiento Salvación Nacional, MSN) revived in late 2021 on the basis of the Constitutional Court's sentence which revived the Nuevo Liberalismo. He claims to represent his uncle's political philosophy, like his attacks on 'the Regime' and themes like the rule of law, public morality, justice and economic development. Gómez Martínez claims to be the only openly right-wing candidate and has hard-right ideas - opposing any peace negotiations with 'terrorists', promising to immediately restart aerial fumigation of coca crops with glyphosate and so forth.
Logged
icc
Rookie
**
Posts: 189
Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #5 on: February 18, 2022, 01:27:41 PM »

It seems like one of the noticeable trends from both the last Presidential election and the 2019 locals was the decreasing power of machines, and greater importance of the voto de opinión. Would you expect that  trend to continue, meaning we could see a (slightly) less corrupt Congress?
Logged
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #6 on: February 19, 2022, 02:57:32 PM »

It seems like one of the noticeable trends from both the last Presidential election and the 2019 locals was the decreasing power of machines, and greater importance of the voto de opinión. Would you expect that  trend to continue, meaning we could see a (slightly) less corrupt Congress?

Yes, the voto de opinión definitely gained in importance over the maquinarias in the 2018 presidential election and, to a lesser extent, the 2019 local elections. Even the 2018 congressional elections in certain places, most notably Bogotá, showed the strength of the voto de opinión. However, I would caution against exaggerating differences between the two or making it a black/white dichotomy as the issue is much more complex, but it's clear that Colombian politics are changing quite rapidly and old clientelist machines are no longer the beasts they were (and no presidential candidate will win the actual election relying solely on machine support).

However, congressional elections are different from presidential elections. Turnout patterns differ substantially (I'll post some maps eventually), and in congressional elections the machine vote is stronger because they (i.e. their leaders) play their own future, and mobilizing their clientele (through whichever means, which may include vote buying) is key. Whereas in presidential elections, they have fewer incentives to mobilize their clientele as efficiently.

Local elections in their patterns are similar to congressional elections, as local power is one of the key foundations for any clientelist network/machine. In 2019, 'alternative' candidates propelled by the voto de opinión did indeed do strikingly well in many cities, including in places where machines had been dominant in the past - most notably Cartagena and Cúcuta but also Villavicencio, Manizales, Buenaventura and even some smaller towns like Turbaco. On the other hand, nearly all gubernatorial elections were won by candidates who had substantial machine backing behind them - including very controversial ones like Blel in Bolívar, Aguilar in Santander (who faced a strong 'alternative' candidate in Leonidas Gómez) and the nefarious Gnecco clan in Cesar. The notable exception may be Carlos Caicedo in Magdalena, who defeated former governor Luis Miguel 'El Mello' Cotes (a controversial and powerful figure who had collected the backing of the bulk of that department's old dominant clans + had his aunt as the incumbent governor then), but Caicedo definitely 'has machines' in Santa Marta and he isn't as alternative in his ways of doing politics that he'd like people to think.

I'm very curious as to what will happen in the congressional elections. I would definitely expect the trends to continue, although nobody knows to what extent. It is quite certain that 'alternative' parties/coalitions and the left will gain ground, perhaps quite substantially, while nearly all the traditional and neo-traditional parties and uribismo are on the defensive this year (trying to save what they have rather than gain more). Gustavo Petro and the Pacto, with their closed list (without Caicedo's Fuerza Ciudadana) are trying to 'presidentialize' the congressional elections, hoping that those who participate in the primary will also vote for the Pacto for Congress - the range of seats for them is anywhere between 10 and 20 in most accounts, depending on how optimistic/pessimistic the forecast is. The three very high-profile presidential primaries which are monopolizing media attention at the expense of the congressional elections may also have the effect of presidentializing the congressional vote, perhaps by bringing out some urban voters who don't usually vote in congressional elections, although past high-turnout concurrent primaries in 2014 and 2018 didn't really overwhelmingly 'presidentialize' those congressional elections (perhaps the left primary in 2018 brought the Decentes over the 3% threshold? But Iván Duque's 4 million votes in the primaries only translated to 2.5 million votes for the CD in the Senate).
Logged
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #7 on: February 19, 2022, 05:03:06 PM »

Now I'll talk in more detail about the congressional elections, which are kind of getting overlooked by the presidential clown car.

I briefly touched upon the electoral system details in my previous post. I will focus on the Senate for now because it's the most high profile and important.

Colombia's Congress is very unpopular and has a really bad reputation, deservedly. The common perception of congressmen is that they are lazy (sleeping on the job or not showing up), corrupt (it’s been referred to as a ‘nest of rats’ more than once), bought off and/or self-serving. Yet, it's a key institution and any president needs a majority in Congress to pass his/her political agenda. While the legislative is often seen as subordinated to the executive, this hides a complicated and dynamic relationship between the two. All past governments, even Duque who was elected with a promise that he wouldn't do that, kind of need to engage in transactional deal-making with congressmen to win their support: in exchange for supporting the government's agenda, congressmen can obtain all sorts of bureaucratic appointments (quotas) in public institutions or government contracts/public works in their regions (known as 'marmalade' since the Santos presidency).

Congressional elections are often seen as being dominated by the maquinarias, or the political machines, referring to the clientelistic networks of certain politicians and their clans (it is also known as the voto amarrado, or tied-down vote). Indeed, the machine vote is stronger in congressional elections because the machines (i.e. their leaders) play their own future in those elections, and mobilizing their clientele (through whichever means, which may include vote buying) is key. Whereas in presidential elections, they have fewer incentives to mobilize their clientele. This difference is perceptible in the significant regional differences in turnout between congressional and presidential elections. In the past, it was said that 70% of votes in congressional elections were 'machine votes' whereas 70% of votes in presidential elections were 'opinion votes', although I really think that's an overly simplistic way of looking at things. Academics have recently been debating a lot about what maquinarias even mean and they warn against exaggerating differences between machines and opinion: basically, any successful candidate for president or even the Senate will need a mix of the two, and parties clearly try to get the best of both.

As I said, Colombia's electoral system is unusual in that parties/lists can decide whether they run open or closed lists. When it is an open list, each candidate on the list will campaign for him(her)self first and foremost, although the fact that seats are first distributed by party based on the cifra repartidora means that there is still an incentive for vote pooling and any list will try to have a candidate (often #1 on the list) who will pull a lot of votes. For example, in 2018, Álvaro Uribe got 890,000 preferential votes (which is the current record), Antanas Mockus got 550,000 votes, which really helped pull the Greens and Robledo got 229,000 votes which accounted for a fifth of all votes for the Polo.

The Colombian electoral system is always broken and always needs to be fixed, though it's basically remained unchanged since the big 2003 political reform (I've been following this long enough to remember at least two or three failed political-electoral reforms), and the 'ideal' that is often proposed is mandatory closed lists, which politicians like to present a silver bullet to magically strengthen parties and get rid of the personalism. But Colombian parties are weak and they have basically no internal democracy, so a closed list might not be as great as it sounds...

Candidates are identified on the ballot only by a number, which refers to their placement on the list (open lists are ordered too when registered). Candidates will therefore campaign with their party logo and number to indicate to their supporters how to vote. Even on open lists, certain numbers are highly sought after: 1 obviously (though there's no guarantee the top candidate on an open list will be elected: this happened in 2018 for the Conservatives' #1 candidate), the other first 10 spots as well as easily identifiable numbers like 100, 10 and other round numbers.

Since 2011, the law requires that at least 30% of candidates on lists in constituencies with 5 or more seats be 'of one of the genders' (i.e. women, usually), but there is no requirement for the rank order/placement of women on the lists or alternation of men/women on lists, and then with open lists of course... The 2011 law did have a positive impact on women's representation in Congress: it increased from 14.2% in 2010 to 20.9% in 2014, and dipped down to 19.7% in 2018. But then I'll also tell you how that a number of these women are old-style machine politicians, clan bosses or 'heirs' just like the men.

Since the changes to the electoral system and ballot design before the 2006 elections, there's been a high percentage of invalid votes in congressional elections: 9.2% for the House, 6.4% for the Senate in 2018 (these percentages are still lower than what they were in 2014 - 12.1% and 10.2%; 2010 - 15.1% and 12% and 2006 - 13.3% and 11%). These numbers are high because the ballot design is so confusing (you can only vote in one constituency, but all constituencies - national/territorial and the ethnic one(s) were on the same ballot!). Electoral authorities have been aware of this since 2006 but in classic Colombian style, it has taken them 16 years to do something. For the first time this year, each constituency will have its own ballot, so this should reduce the number of invalid votes.

It is extremely unlikely that any one list will win an absolute majority of seats in either house. In 2018, the largest party in the Senate was the CD which got just 16.4% of the vote and 19/100 national seats.

There are 16 lists for Senate in the national constituency. 8 are open, 8 are closed. I will explain each of them, focusing on their top candidates and their prospects for this year. Maybe in later posts I'll go through the main candidates on the major lists.

Centro Democrático (CD)
In 2018, led by Eternal President Álvaro Uribe himself, the CD won the most votes and seats in the Senate (16.4%, 19 seats), a result similar to their result in their inaugural election in 2014 (their closed list won 14.3% and 19 seats). Uribe won 891,900 preferential votes, a record (unlikely to be broken this year) which helped carry a number of candidates with much lower individual votes. Without Uribe on their list for the first time ever, and with the party severely weakened by the government's unpopularity, Uribe's greater unpopularity and their more obvious internal divisions, the CD is likely to lose a few seats this year - a loss of around 5 seats would not be surprising, I think (maybe even optimistic for them). Their top candidate, chosen by the Eternal President, is Miguel Uribe Turbay, who was the right/uribismo's mayoral candidate in Bogotá in 2019 (finishing a paltry fourth with 13.6% after a pretty bad campaign). Uribe Turbay is the grandson of former Liberal president Julio César Turbay (1978-1982, undoubtedly one of the worst presidents in modern Colombian history) and the son of Diana Turbay (a journalist who died in a botched rescue attempt while she was held hostage by Pablo Escobar), he served as a Liberal city councillor in Bogotá (2011-2015) and was Enrique Peñalosa's secretary of government (2015-2018); he was chosen because he offers a moderate face, and has the same surname as Uribe (and he has really dropped his maternal surname this time around...). Although he's learned his uribista lessons well, Miguel Uribe isn't a great candidate: he's the epitome of the young rich political heir who owes a lot to his surname, and he seems to be campaigning for Bogotá city council rather than Senate sometimes. Three of the unsuccessful presidential pre-candidates are on the list: former Casanare governor Alirio Barrera (#2, but his candidacy caused a spat with his cousin, incumbent senator Amanda Rocío González, who got 46,000 votes in 2018) and senators Paloma Valencia (#10) and María Fernanda Cabal (#100). Cabal, the standard bearer for the furibista far-right (in a recent leaked recording she called Duque a 'mamerto [pejorative term for leftist] left-liberal'), wanted to be the top candidate and is now competing with Uribe Turbay to win the most preferential votes. 7 incumbent senators are not seeking re-election (and one is running for another party, which is illegal), including prominent figures like Ernesto Macías (former president of the Senate and close Duque ally), party ideologue José Obdulio Gaviria and close Uribe ally María del Rosario Guerra. Some, like Guerra, are leaving 'heirs', while for others the hope is that newcomers will fill the holes (most notably would be Bogotá rep. Edward Rodríguez, a Duque loyalist, who is 'jumping' to the Senate and got 104k votes in the capital in 2018). The list has its fair share of controversial candidates, like Daniel García, a former Uribe administration official who became Odebrecht's Colombian lobbyist after being removed from office for lying about his qualifications (and, later, the link between Zuluaga and Odebrecht in 2014).

Cambio Radical (CR)
With the expansion of the Char clan across the Caribbean and Vargas Lleras' todo vale alliances with all kinds of machines around the country, CR was the biggest winner in 2018, gaining 7 seats in the Senate, going from 9 to 16, making it the second-largest caucus. Circumstances are much different this year. The top candidate is former ICT minister (2015-2018) David Luna, a former Liberal who became close to Vargas Lleras while in cabinet. Luna previously served one term in the House (2006-2010) and was the Liberal mayoral candidate in Bogotá in 2011, winning 4.2%; in 2020 he helped create an association of app-based services like Uber and Rappi. Luna is a clear attempt to compete for 'opinion votes' in a party which has a reputation of ethically questionable machine politics (and also to send the message that Vargas Lleras still has power here). CR is losing a few key senators - Vargas Lleras ally Germán Varón (whose endorsement of Alejandro Gaviria caused the Betancourt psychodrama), Rodrigo Lara (who had the third most votes in CR in 2018), Claudia Castellanos (from the evangelical MCI) and the corrupt-criminal Aguilar clan. With a few exceptions, CR's list is replete with machine politicians and incumbents - including Alex Char's dumb brother Arturo (who won the most votes of any CR candidate in 2018, over 126k), who faces an open investigation in the Supreme Court for electoral crimes (vote buying) and allegedly being behind Aída Merlano's escape in 2019. The Char clan should lose some ground, but still remain quite strong. CR is losing a few key senators - Vargas Lleras ally Germán Varón (whose endorsement of Alejandro Gaviria caused the Betancourt psychodrama), Rodrigo Lara (who had the third most votes in CR in 2018), Claudia Castellanos (from the evangelical church MCI) and the corrupt-criminal Aguilar clan. To compensate for that, CR is largely relying on representatives 'jumping' to the Senate and machine candidates. Notably, CD senator Amanda Rocío González is running for reelection for CR, after a feud with her cousin.

Conservative Party
The Conservatives lost four seats in 2018, going from 18 to 14 seats (actually 13 because Aída Merlano's seat was ruled vacant, silla vacía), and won about 1.9 million votes. The goal is to maintain those numbers this year, although the party's most voted senator from 2018, David Barguil (146k votes), is not on the ballot. The party's top candidate is seven-term senator Efraín Cepeda, who won the second most votes for the godos in 2018 (124.4k). Cepeda, whose base is in Atlántico, is one of the most prominent Conservative senators (he was president of the Senate in 2017) and although he doesn't have any major corruption scandal or controversy to his name, he's the quintessential Colombian congressman - that is, an opportunist who supports whichever government and knows how to play his cards to ensure the placement of his people as 'quotas' in various public entities. Cepeda at the top of the list shows that the Conservatives aren't even trying to even give an appearance of 'renewal'. Most of their candidates are either incumbents (including controversial ones like Laureano Acuña, the Barreto clan of Tolima, Nadya Blel, the Merheg clan of Risaralda), 'heirs' of retiring incumbents or new groups now allied with the Conservatives (most notably the much weakened Aguilar clan).

Liberal Party
The Liberal Party lost two seats in 2018, falling to 14 seats, although its vote share remained stable and its total vote increased to 1.9 million. It will be an uphill challenge for the divided party to retain those numbers, but the party - which has no presidential candidate yet - is betting on maintaining a strong presence in the Senate to negotiate its support for the presidential election. Like the Conservatives, the Liberals are not even trying to even give the appearance of fresh blood: their top candidate is three-term senator Lidio García Turbay, who was the party's most voted candidate in 2018 with 121,700 votes and served as president of the Senate in 2019 (also a vallenatero). García Turbay comes from an influential (and controversial) political family in Bolívar, his stronghold (his cousin Dumek was governor 2016-2019), and has an old investigation for parapolítica that was reactivated in 2021. 6 of the party's 14 incumbents are not seeking re-election (Horacio José Serpa, Luis Fernando Velasco, Andrés Cristo, Rodrigo Villalba etc.), and party boss César Gaviria's strategy to compensate these losses is with the remaining incumbents, representatives 'jumping' to the Senate (like Alejandro Carlos Chacón from Norte de Santander) and even more political machines, particularly from the Caribbean coast. There's no shortage of controversial candidates on the list, like Aída Merlano's ex-husband, former four-term Conservative Barranquilla city councillor Carlos Rojano. The evangelical church MCI, which was with CR in 2018 (and with uribismo in 2014), is with the Liberals since 2019, and former Bogotá city councillor Sara Castellanos (daughter of CR senator/MCI co-owner Claudia Castellanos) is 12th on the list.

Partido de la U
The Partido de la U (which now stands for Partido de la Unión por la Gente) has been in decline for years and was the biggest loser in 2018, losing 7 seats and falling from 2.2 million votes to 1.8 million votes. The party, now led by the powerful 'baron' of the Valle, former governor Dilian Francisca Toro, is facing further loses this year: it lost two of its most famous senators to the Pacto - Roy Barreras (who was the U's top candidate and most voted candidate in 2018 with over 110k votes) and Armando Benedetti, expelled in 2020 (Roosvelt Rodríguez, a former ally of Toro, also announced his support for Petro recently and left the party, he won 107,000 votes in 2018); and only 6 of its 11 remaining senators are running for re-election. The U's top candidate is Olympic medallist Catherine Ibargüen, a political newcomer to give the party a fresh face (Afro-Colombian woman, athlete etc.). But she is only nice facade: behind her, the Partido de la U is betting on Toro's own structure, incumbents, representatives jumping upwards, heirs and new/recycled machines (some with closets overflowing with skeletons) to retain its seats. The list includes, for example, the brothers of the infamous 'Ñoños' of 2014 Bernardo 'el Ñoño' Elías and Musa Besaile (the former incarcerated since 2018 and recently sentenced to 8 years in jail for taking bribes from Odebrecht; the latter incarcerated since 2017 for bribing judges in the 'cartel of the toga' to freeze his investigations for parapolítica), Julio Elías Vidal and incumbent senator Johnny Besaile.
Logged
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #8 on: February 19, 2022, 05:03:58 PM »

Alianza Verde-Centro Esperanza
The Green Alliance and the Centro Esperanza coalition (minus Nuevo Liberalismo) are running a coalition list for Senate. Like everything in the centrist coalition, the Senate list was a long, tortuous process with drama, infighting, disagreements and about-faces. In 2018, the Greens, thanks to Antanas Mockus' candidacy, which won a massive 549,000 preferential votes, were one of the main winners, gaining 4 seats for a total of 9 and winning 8.6% of the vote. In addition, Jorge Enrique Robledo, with the Polo at the time, won 229,000 preferential votes. The Green-Centre coalition list is an open list with candidates from the Greens, Dignidad, ASI, Verde Oxígeno and Colombia Renaciente. The list's top candidate is former chief peace negotiator and 2018 Liberal presidential candidate Humberto de la Calle, a veteran politician who has held various political offices since the 1990s but has never served in Congress. De la Calle is a respected and unifying figure for the disparate patch-up that is the centrist coalition, who all pushed him to be their top candidate. He would have preferred a closed list, and even at one point said he wouldn't run if it wasn't a closed list, but he relented as they insisted. They hope that de la Calle will attract a lot of 'opinion votes' to boost the list, as Mockus did in 2018 (not sure if 550k votes for him is on the cards though). The list includes 6 of the 9 Green incumbents (notably Angélica Lozano, the wife of Bogotá mayor Claudia López, and one of the best senators), other politicians (some former congressmen and others like former Caldas governor Guido Echeverri, a traditional politician turned more 'alternative'), a few 'heirs' (like Miguel Samper, the son of former president Ernesto Samper), trade union figures and some candidates from civil society. Because the Greens are divided between Petro and the centre, some of their candidates on the list support Petro/the left (notably Antioquia rep. León Fredy Muñoz, detained at the airport in 2018 with cocaine in his luggage, and Bogotá rep. Inti Asprilla). Speaking subjectively, there are some very good candidates on the list but also a few who I'm much cooler about.

Pacto Histórico (PH)
Gustavo Petro wants to presidentialize the congressional elections, with the stated goal to win a congressional majority on March 13, and Petro's campaign is telling its supporters 'how to vote for Petro' on March 13: for him in the primary, and for the Pacto's closed lists for the Senate and the House. In 2018, Petro and his allies' Decentes coalition won 3.4% and elected 3 senators (one of whom, 'Manguito', turned out to be a right-winger...), in addition to the four Polo senators which are now part of the PH coalition. The Pacto's gamble this year is to win the most votes and seats, with a closed list where voters only vote 'for the logo' - the expectations range from 10 to 20 seats (the record for a closed list is the CD in 2014, which got 19 seats). Putting together a closed list was difficult, given that the placement on the list (in the top 10-20 spots) is of the utmost importance and there were a lot of politicians and groups who wanted to secure their spots while the Pacto also promised to guarantee the representation of social movements and ethnic minorities. Not everyone was pleased with the outcome: most notably, presidential candidate Francia Márquez threatened (without much bite) to leave the Pacto after the coalition didn't keep its promise to her movement Soy Porque Somos (none of them in the first 20, when Petro had promised a spot between 11 and 15 to one of them). The list's top candidate is senator Gustavo Bolívar, an author and telenovela screenwriter (considered the father of the 'narcogenre') and very visible Petro loyalist (in fact, he's been Petro's videographer in the Senate). Bolívar is a divisive figure who is disliked by several of his colleagues in the PH; he's kind of a blowhard and very theatrical (I feel he's kind of petrismo's answer to the loudmouth uribistas) and he has his own share of past demons and current controversies. He got the top spot ahead of his rival, Bogotá rep. María José Pizarro (daughter of assassinated M-19 commander Carlos Pizarro), who is second. The top spots alternate between men and women (lista cremallera in Spanish). The top 20 positions on the list gave priority to incumbents, politicians and the various political groups within the Pacto - rather than the 'diversity' and social movements that it had promised to include. Candidates include senators Alexander López (Polo, 3), Iván Cepeda (Polo, 7), Wilson Arias (Polo, 15), Roy Barreras (ADA, 5), Aída Avella (UP, 4), former senator Piedad Córdoba (8, again at the centre of major controversy regarding the actual extent of her ties with the FARC and overreaching her role as mediator with Chávez in 'humanitarian exchange' talks for the release of FARC hostages in 2007), former presidential candidate Clara López (12) and Boyacá rep. César Pachón (MAIS, 17). The list also includes the 'quotas' of senator Armando Benedetti, presidential candidate Camilo Romero (his sister-in-law) and Medellín mayor Daniel Quintero.

Nuevo Liberalismo
For its first election, Juan Manuel Galán's Nuevo Liberalismo is running alone, separate from its other coalition partners, with a closed list with alternation of men and women in the first 12 spots (lista cremallera). Galán insisted on a closed list to promote the new New Liberalism as a liberal alternative, ensure gender parity and highlight new leaders. The top candidate, Mabel Lara, shows the message that the list wants to send. Mabel Lara, an Afro-Colombian woman from Cauca, is a journalist and award-winning news presenter (most recently with Caracol Radio) who has also worked in social development projects in her native region. She has never run for office before and is a new face who can attract a lot of 'opinion votes'. The list includes a fair number of candidates from civil society with little or no prior electoral experience, which is pretty rare in Colombian congressional elections (even for 'alternative' parties and the left) - academics like Sandra Borda (#3), Afro human rights leader and conflict victim Yolanda Perea (#5), feminist human rights lawyer Viviana Vargas (#7). To be sure, there are politicians, both old and new figures of the revived movement, most notably Juan Manuel's younger brother Carlos Fernando Galán (#6, former CR senator and runner-up in the 2019 mayoral election in Bogotá).

MIRA-Colombia Justa Libres (CJL)
The Christian parties MIRA and Colombia Justa Libres (CJL) are running in coalition this year. In 2018, MIRA won 3.2% and 3 seats and CJL narrowly passed the 3% threshold in the final count (in the pre-count it was below 3% but the final count somehow ‘found’ 33,500 more votes for them), and three seats each. They are running an open list – MIRA usually had closed lists in the past, but ran with an open list in 2018, while CJL had a closed list in 2018. The top candidate is incumbent MIRA senator Ana Paola Agudelo, who was representative for Colombians abroad (living in Spain) between 2014 and 2018 and was elected to the Senate in 2018, as MIRA’s top candidate (with 71,200 votes). Including Agudelo, there are three incumbent senators on the list (only one of them from CJL) and one representative (Bogotá CJL rep. Carlos Eduardo Acosta).

Fuerza Ciudadana
Fuerza Ciudadana is the movement of Carlos Caicedo, the left-wing governor of Magdalena since 2020 and Petro's sole (token) rival in his 2018 primary (Caicedo won a respectable 15.3% and over 500k votes). Part of the Pacto, it is however running its own open list which includes a lot of petristas - in part it is a reaction to the battles within the Pacto for the limited but highly disputed spots on its closed list, in part a bit for Caicedo's movement to gain party status for his own presidential ambitions in 2026. Caicedo is a left-wing politician who was mayor of Santa Marta (2012-2015), and has been for decades the sworn enemy of the old corrupt traditional clans which have dominated politics in Magdalena, and in 2019 he defeated them in the gubernatorial election. But Caicedo has adopted some of the dubious practices of traditional politicians (using the municipality and public resources to favour his movement electorally) and while he has undoubtedly been the target of political persecution/lawfare by his powerful enemies, he's also faced a lot of accusations and open judicial investigations - corruption allegations for irregularities in unfinished infrastructure projects and even an unresolved homicide case from 2000 (with conflicting stories). The list is led by Gilberto Tobón, an academic and political commentator (with over 400,000 Twitter followers) who is famous for hot takes that go viral on social media. Caicedo's ally and former mayor of Santa Marta (2016-2019) Rafael Martínez is third on the list; Martínez is also involved in the open corruption charges against Caicedo. The list also includes Hollman Morris, a Petro ally who was Colombia Humana's mayoral candidate in Bogotá in 2019 - at the time he was accused of domestic violence and sexual violence, but refused to step aside, which divided the petrista left and damaged Petro's feminist creed after (although Petro defended him in 2019, he seems to have distanced himself and didn't want him to run for Congress). There are also a few left-wing influencers on the list.

Comunes (ex-FARC)
Comunes, as the FARC party renamed itself last year, is again entitled to five seats in the Senate as per the 2016 peace agreement. In 2018, the FARC party won just 0.3% – around 50,000 votes – and no better in the 2019 local elections. In addition to the security challenges faced by reintegrated members of the ex-FARC guerrilla (assassinations etc.) and their obvious toxic reputation which makes them persona non grata in all political alliances (even the left), the party has been badly divided by factionalism and infighting since 2020. A faction led by senators ‘Victoria Sandino’ and Israel Zúñiga ‘Benkos Biohó’, who unsuccessfully asked to split the party last year, have complained that control of the party has been monopolized by a small ‘authoritarian’ clique around the party’s leader Rodrigo Londoño (‘Timochenko’, the last commander of the FARC) which has purged dissidents. The Comunes’ closed list shows little renewal of party ranks and little interest in cleaning up the party’s very negative image – four of the five top candidates are former members of the guerrilla; three of the five top candidates are incumbent senators (Sandino and Zúñiga were excluded). The top candidate is senator Julián Gallo (alias Carlos Antonio Lozada), member of the party leadership and former member of the FARC Secretariat. In January 2021, the JEP (transitional justice) charged eight members of the former FARC Secretariat, including Gallo and Pablo Catatumbo (third on the list) with crimes against humanity and war crimes for hostage taking and kidnapping during the armed conflict, the first macro-case opened by the JEP. All those charged acknowledged truth and responsibility. They could still be able to participate in politics with the sanctions imposed by the JEP (assuming they acknowledge truth and responsibility) if the JEP finds the sanction compatible with political participation.

Movimiento de Salvación Nacional (MSN)
The revived right-wing MSN is running a closed list with 16 candidates. The top candidate is José Miguel Santamaría, a businessman and son of a former Conservative governor of Cundinamarca. Santamaría ran for Senate four year ago for the CD and won 16,000 preferential votes, and recently participated in a committee seeking the recall of Bogotá mayor Claudia López.

Estamos Listas
Estamos Listas is one of the more interesting novelties in this election: it is a collective feminist movement, which first appeared in Medellín in 2019, when it won one seat in the city council with 3.8% of the vote (28,000 votes). It is now trying to expand to the national level, after having successfully collected 76,000 valid signatures to appear on the ballot. Obviously, in its internal organization (radical democracy/grassroots direct democracy, collective leadership and decision-making), who it represents and what issues it brings forward, it is a new and unique political movement in a rather machista country like Colombia. In Medellín, it put a feminist agenda on the table and raised awareness about the realities faced by women – notably, it has helped in the search for missing women and girls. They are running a closed list with 11 women (there are 5 men on the list symbolically, in the last spots, to comply with legal requirements, but they are not presented as candidates by the movement). Candidates cannot have held public office before or participated in the last elections, so all candidates are from civil society, and some come from marginalized or underrepresented groups (underrepresented departments, LGBT, Afro-Colombian women). The list is led by Elizabeth Giraldo, an historian and specialist in urban studies who is a political advisor to the movement’s councillor in Medellín. They are following the same strategy they used in Medellín in 2019: a self-funded campaign, which rejects donations from businessmen or business associations/lobbies, with a collective campaign emphasizing the movement and its proposals rather than individual candidates. Estamos Listas recently voted to endorse Francia Márquez’s presidential candidacy, and they’ve received the support of former representative Ángela María Robledo, who was Petro’s running mate in 2018.

Movimiento Unitario Metapolítico
A 1990s throwback, the Metapolitical Unitarian Movement is the political group of one of the craziest figures in Colombian politics, Regina Betancourt, commonly known as Regina 11 (or to her critics as ‘the witch’, or to her followers as ‘Mama Regina’), a mentalist, psychic, mystic and faith-healer who leads a movement/cult known as saurología (or Sabiduría Universal Reginista). Claiming to have prophetic powers thank to a childhood experience in which she made mental contact with Cardinal Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII, she became famous thanks to a radio program in the 1970s, ran for president three times (1986, 1991 and 1994), and served as city councillor and senator (1991-1994). The symbol of her movement is a broom, which she promised would sweep away the immorality that plagued the country, and she gave away magnetized ‘bank notes’. She performed rituals and spells inside the Capitol, which somehow isn’t the weirdest or most awful thing that’s taken place there. Her political career ended abruptly in the mid-1990s: she was mysteriously kidnapped and held hostage for five months and was later convicted of extortion (for demanding money from people in her office in Congress), though she was later found innocent. She largely disappeared from politics afterwards but continued as a spiritual leader for her cult and developed her own line of products which she sells, although she claims that politicians have continued to visit her to seek her support (and votes) before reverting to calling her a witch after winning. Her movement has made it back on the ballot with a closed list of 11 candidates, although Regina 11 is not a candidate herself. She is now an anti-vaxxer and conspiranoid, who claims that COVID-19 is part of a plan to create a global dictatorship and reduce the adult population with a bacteria and vaccine. She also says that drinking your own urine can prevent COVID-19 and a bunch of other things. Her platform also proposes a resocialization program for homeless people where they’d be sent to farms with no money and cellphone and would receive treatment from doctors and psychologists. The most votes she ever won in the 1990s was around 64,000 in the 1994 presidential election, while she won a seat in the Senate with around 30,000 votes in 1991.

Gente Nueva
A little-known anti-corruption movement running a closed list with 19 candidates. It supports Rodolfo Hernández, but the support is not reciprocal: Rodolfo put out a statement saying that the only congressional list he supports is his own Liga’s list for the House in Santander.

Movimiento SOS Colombia
SOS Colombia stands for ‘Sector Organizado de la Salud’ and is a group of healthcare workers opposed to Colombia’s (broken) healthcare system. They have a closed list with 25 candidates.
Logged
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #9 on: February 21, 2022, 04:50:40 PM »

I've started a weekly news digest of campaign stuff on my new Medium page, and here's the first one: https://medium.com/colombian-politics-and-elections/2022-colombian-election-digest-i-5794c1a162f2

EDIT: Just as I posted this, I find out that the ConCourt voted 5-4 to decriminalize abortion up to the 24th week of pregnancy.  Exclamation point (red)

I'd invite everyone to read it and it isn't so long (12 minutes). But here's an exclusive summary:

  • Six debates in six days. I watched all of them. Nothing particularly exciting besides Char showing up through Zoom for his first ever debate and confirming that he has no real ideas. The right blamed Petro for everything, the left blamed the media/establishment for everything, the centre (I will now call them Despair Centre) mostly squabbled amongst themselves with some pretty tense moments. Nobody besides Petro stood out in the Pacto debates; Francia Márquez is the only other good candidate but she needs to diversify her talking points away from structural racism.
  • The Invamer poll shows that everybody hates everything and everyone. Dissatisfaction with the direction of the country is basically still at record highs (85%). Petro gained 8% in favourability and is one of only 3 candidates with net positive views.



  • Rodolfo Hernández had a running-mate for 4 days: Paola Ochoa, a journalist/commentator famous for saying some dumb things and constantly showing herself to be a clueless rich girl who has never left northern Bogotá. Rodolfo apparently picked her on an impulse without telling anyone, the news was revealed through Ochoa's employer (Blu Radio) and then she dropped out four days later because people had started gossiping about her marital crisis. So Rodolfo still lacks a running-mate with basically less than 3 weeks to go.
  • The centre kept fighting amongst themselves, this time Galán vs. Amaya, with the topic being Amaya's alleged bureaucratic quotas in Bogotá. Amaya fired back by pointing out that the Galán family has lived off public $ for over 20 years. The real background here is a fight for Bogotá with Galán trying to score points for himself (both for March 2022 and for 2023 for his brother's likely repeat mayoral candidacy) by attacking unpopular Bogotá mayor Claudia López.
  • Explosive revelations about Piedad Córdoba (8th on the Pacto closed list for Senate) which are in good part a throwback to the 2008 Raúl Reyes FARC computer files. One of her former advisers said she manipulated the release of FARC hostages to score political points for her and Chávez in 2007, and allegedly even advised the FARC to delay Ingrid Betancourt's release because of her value as a hostage. She is also accused of having acted as an agent of the Chávez government, and tied to Alex Saab, the corrupt businessman who did business with Venezuela until he was arrested in 2020. Serious stuff which makes the Pacto visibly uncomfortable, just like the right flinches when Char's name is brought up.
  • Alejandro Gaviria continued meeting with traditional politicians, this time apparently with Vargas Lleras and César Gaviria. This upsets his colleagues in the Despair Centre coalition.
  • Betancourt got mixed up in her Spanish because she was thinking in French and said something that made it sound like she was blaming women victims of rape. Really not helping to fix the "she's a foreigner who spent too much time in Paris" perception here.
  • Rodolfo Hernández doesn't know what the department of Vichada is. Neither do most people, but most people aren't running to govern a country which includes Vichada.
  • Evangelical senator/pastor John Milton Rodríguez's candidacy is presumably RIP after the CNE invalidated the convention where he was nominated. The convention and his candidacy were challenged by a dissident faction within CJL.
  • Duque is on vacation an official visit abroad again to spout nonsense while Rome burns.

Details on all these things in my Medium post.
Logged
H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY
Alfred F. Jones
Atlas Icon
*****
Posts: 15,075
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #10 on: February 21, 2022, 05:18:13 PM »

💚💜💚
Logged
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #11 on: March 01, 2022, 07:44:05 PM »
« Edited: March 01, 2022, 07:55:00 PM by Hash »

My second digest was published here: https://medium.com/colombian-politics-and-elections/2022-colombian-election-digest-ii-3c2b444dda37. Again, please read it, it's not that long.

Here's my summary:

  • Abortion was the big news in Colombia of the past week. My post on Medium includes all the details, background, history and the Court's majority opinion. The reactions have been... kind of predictable? The left and centre are broadly happy, although Petro again waffled a bit because he's afraid of being too explicitly pro-choice (he claims to support 'zero abortions' but opposes criminalization), and mostly kept himself to congratulating the women who fought for the decision. Alfredo Saade, the evangelical guy in the Pacto, says he respects the Court's decision. On the right, reactions were mixed: unsurprisingly the more out and out conservatives like Lizarazo, Barguil and Fico were opposed, Barguil particularly so (and promises to lead a constitutional reform that'd seek to overturn this decision in some form), while Peñalosa had a pretty good reaction for a centre-right liberal (unenthusiastic but saying that criminalization harms women and doesn't prevent abortions). The only real surprise was Char, whose views on most issues are summed up by '??', who more or less implied that he was OK with it. All of uribismo opposed it; Duque said something dumb ('abortion will be used as contraception') and showed that he doesn't understand that the Court is more than just a bunch of people (it's not good that Duque has, more than once, openly criticized the ConCourt's decisions because he personally disagrees with it instead of respecting institutionality and the rule of law as he's supposed to do).
  • Anti-abortion groups will seek to revert this decision, although it will be difficult. The most 'promising' way for them is the idea of a citizen-initiated constitutional referendum, an idea which has been welcomed by Uribe, Duque, many CD senators, Conservative president of the Senate Juan Diego Gómez and others. But it is a long, tricky and complicated process that basically will require, on top of getting at least 2+ million signatures (the easy part) the approval of Congress , the ConCourt's green light and a turnout quorum if it goes to a vote. This means that these referendums end up being used by politicians and groups to get free publicity and mobilize their supporters. So far, Liberal senatorial candidate Sara Castellanos (former Btá. city councillor and daughter of the owners of the MCI evangelical church, has registered a committee for a 'referendum for life'. Yes, the woman leading the anti-abortion referendum campaign is running for Senate for the Liberal Party, the same Liberal Party which Petro has been incessantly wooing for months because of the Liberal Party's great historical left-wing values or something. Colombian politics...
  • The centrist coalition has basically imploded. These people are pathologically incapable of not spending the entire campaign just fighting amongst themselves. Again it has to do with Alejandro Gaviria's pragmatism and willingness to seek out and accept endorsements from traditional politicians (in the Liberal and CR parties mostly) that most of the other 4 candidates hate. The recent crisis has to do with A. Gaviria's apparent reconciliation with Liberal boss César Gaviria (the former president), and him saying that he'd accept C. Gaviria's support if he won the primary and that anyway if he didn’t accept César Gaviria, other candidates would (whereas most other members of the coalition, particularly Fajardo & Galán hate C. Gaviria). Then Alejandro Gaviria was endorsed by retiring ex-CR senator Rodrigo Lara, who is now his campaign manager, and there's a lot of recent bad blood between Lara and Galán after Galán more or less blocked Lara's attempts to be a presidential candidate for Nuevo Liberalismo. By meeting with C. Gaviria and indicating that he'd accept his endorsement, many of his 'colleagues' now feel that Alejandro Gaviria has not kept his word and gone too far (the unacceptable red line for the coalition that all agreed upon is not accepting the support of politicians and parties who supported Iván Duque and his government). Jorge Enrique Robledo came out and said that Gaviria had broken the agreement and said that if Gaviria won the primary, he wouldn't support or campaign for him, and even said Gaviria would cause immense damage to the country. Fajardo, who has been on the receiving end of attacks from Gaviria for a bit now and has a rivalry with him, has also hinted in classical Fajardo style that he might not support Gaviria either... Therefore, the Centro Esperanza has basically imploded, melted away under the weight of its contradictions.
  • Just yesterday, Petro finally met with Liberal boss César Gaviria. The Liberals will, as expected, decide on a presidential candidate to support after the congressional elections/primaries, and if Alejandro Gaviria doesn't win the centrist primary, then I assume it is increasingly likely that César Gaviria would give his nod to Petro, which would be a major boon for Petro, even though he'll be criticized (with reason!) for that (even on the left). Petro has spent months wooing César Gaviria and the Liberals, and has already attracted a fair number of Liberal congressmen, openly or not, to his side, and incessantly makes references to the Liberal Party's symbolism and 'great history' of left-wing/progressive values (LOL!). In any case, seems like old César Gaviria's strategy of 'wait and see' will have paid off because everybody wants him...
  • Char ran into far-right/lunatic fringe CD senator María Fernanda Cabal and told her that he needs her support, and later apparently offered her to be his running-mate, although he should know that's not legally possible. It's bizarre because Char had been going for a non-ideological 'I'm neither right nor left because problems have no ideology' shtick, whereas Cabal is the opposite of that (a fire-brething far-right ideologue who thinks Duque is a crypto-commie wuss). But Cabal clearly dislikes Zuluaga (her party's hapless candidate) and hasn't gotten over her defeat in the CD presidential candidate selection process. And she's also said that she distrusts Fico because she fears he'd been a Duque 2.0 and... she's kind of right?!
  • The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a pretty distant issue and only seems to be relevant insofar as it can be connected to Venezuela, which isn't that hard. Duque has, unsurprisingly, condemned the invasion. But Colombia's foreign policy, especially under village idiot Duque, has been useless. As for the presidential candidates, their reaction has been... pretty pathetic? The right-wingers seem more interested in using it to screech about 'radical left'/Maduro bad/Petro=Maduro=Putin. The centre's response has been OK, except for Robledo who has sadly gone down the 'NATO provocation' road (not too surprising from him but pretty sad given that he's not an idiot). As for Petro, well, he's basically said that he doesn't care and that Colombia should focus on its own problems and it can't help anyone. He's not actually condemned the invasion. All this reinforces my personal view that, if Petro is elected, he wouldn't be a Chávez/Castro/Maduro but rather AMLO (I don't say this as praise or in a good way).
  • The ELN launched a 72 hour 'paro armado', basically an armed show of force consisting of terrorist attacks, bombings etc. It has, once again, largely highlighted the catastrophic failure of Duque's security policy, especially in rural areas. The government's response was god-awful: the interior minister denied that there even was a paro armado (will Colombian politicians ever learn that denying real-life events is NOT a good idea?* Jesus) while the defence minister implied that there was (both men in question are morons), while Duque just preferred to ask rhetorically who the ELN was campaigning for instead of, you know, doing his job properly.

* Juan Manuel Santos famously denied the existence of the 2013 agrarian protests (el tal paro agrario no existe...) when it most definitely did, and it blew up in his face. Or any politician denying clear evidence of illegal financing of their campaigns (hi, Samper!).
Logged
Velasco
andi
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 5,684
Western Sahara


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #12 on: March 02, 2022, 05:38:17 AM »
« Edited: March 02, 2022, 05:45:10 AM by Velasco »


The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a pretty distant issue and only seems to be relevant insofar as it can be connected to Venezuela, which isn't that hard. Duque has, unsurprisingly, condemned the invasion. But Colombia's foreign policy, especially under village idiot Duque, has been useless. As for the presidential candidates, their reaction has been... pretty pathetic? The right-wingers seem more interested in using it to screech about 'radical left'/Maduro bad/Petro=Maduro=Putin. The centre's response has been OK, except for Robledo who has sadly gone down the 'NATO provocation' road (not too surprising from him but pretty sad given that he's not an idiot). As for Petro, well, he's basically said that he doesn't care and that Colombia should focus on its own problems and it can't help anyone. He's not actually condemned the invasion. All this reinforces my personal view that, if Petro is elected, he wouldn't be a Chávez/Castro/Maduro but rather AMLO (I don't say this as praise or in a good way).


The reaction from Colombian rightwingers is rather unsurprising and actially resembles a little the reaction of conservative media and politicians in Spain, pointing to non-existing links between Putin and Podemos while silencing the actual connections between Putin's regime and ultraconservative organizations like HazteOir (closely alligned to Vox). Rightwingers and outdated anti-imperialists fail to see Putin is not a communist and that he's actually sponsoring the far-right in Europe. The reaction from the Colombian leftwingers is quite disheartening, on the other hand. Sadly it seems that Petro and others are not looking southwards to Chile, where Gabriel Boric condemns unequivocally the aggressor and embraces the people under attack. Unlike others, Boric knows where is the correct side of history

 
Logged
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #13 on: March 04, 2022, 03:22:10 PM »

Yesterday, in a radio interview Duque said that he'd vote in the primaries on March 13. The thing is: his party's candidate (Zuluaga) is not participating in any primary, and the CD's order had been not to support any of the primaries and only the party's congressional candidates, although Uribe was more ambiguous recently when he admitted that some supporters would vote in the primaries while others would not. Duque complained that his party wanted to put him a straightjacket and said that he'd vote in the primaries because he believes in primaries as a valuable democratic mechanism (he was, after all, chosen in a successful primary in 2018 which greatly boosted his campaign's momentum).

Duque didn't say which primary he'd vote for but it's obvious: he will vote in the Equipo por Colombia's primary. Who will he vote for? In the past he's praised all of the members of this coalition, but he will most likely vote for Fico Gutiérrez (I guess he could vote for Peñalosa too). In a recent interview, María Fernanda Cabal (the uribista far-right lunatic) said that Fico is Duque's candidate and that Duque only used Zuluaga last year to defeat her (she also said that she fears Fico will be a Duque 2.0). Fico has been widely seen for months as a crypto-uribista or as uribismo's Plan B: although Fico is not an uribista, he talks like one and has many close connections with uribismo.

All of this is not too surprising: Duque's main interest in these elections is stopping Petro, and it is unlikely that Duque has any great affection, sympathy or sense of loyalty for Zuluaga. Duque and his small group of loyalists (like retiring senator Ernesto Macías) worked very hard to have Zuluaga participate in the right-wing primary (with Fico, Peñalosa, Char etc.) and Duque was very unhappy when Uribe et al. preemptively announced that Zuluaga wouldn't participate in any primary: Duque had a very uncomfortable phone call with Zuluaga afterwards in which Duque curtly finished telling him "don't count on me" before hanging up.

But in doing this, Duque is helping to self-sabotage if not bury Zuluaga's campaign. He will be voting in a primary for candidate other than his own party's candidate, knowing full well that a successful primary will benefit the winner of that primary.

La Silla Vacía today revealed how uribista bases in at least 7 departments are covertly campaigning for Fico, including some close allies of Duque and the governments (like Macías, who has also said he'd vote in the primaries).

With basically two weeks until the candidate registration/modification period closes and just a week before the primaries, it's clear that Zuluaga's campaign is struggling and not taking off - and that the tea leaves aren't promising for him - so it is becoming more and more obvious that uribismo will consider Plan B and that there will be frenetic negotiations between March 13 and March 18 (after which candidacies can no longer be modified) between the CD and the winner of the Equipo por Colombia coalition.



There's a new poll out today from Invamer, one of the better pollsters, that shows Petro close to winning in the first round and winning in all second round scenarios. It's actually not that big of a change from their last poll, back in November 2021. They've tested a bunch of scenarios so here they are:

R1


R2


They also polled the primaries:

PH - 38%
Petro 78.6%
Márquez 13.5%
Romero 5.9%
Uriana 1.7%
Saade 0.3%
excl. undecideds (5%)

Equipo por Colombia - 19.1%
Fico 28.9%
Char 24.7%
Peñalosa 18.7%
Barguil 15.5%
Lizarazo 12.3%
excl. undecideds (10.6%)

CE - 14.5%
Fajardo 37.8%
Galán 23.9%
Amaya 14.9%
Gaviria 12.9%
Robledo 10.5%
excl. undecideds (20.4%)

28.4% said that they would definitely/probably vote in the primaries but are still unsure in which one

I've published a deep dive/analysis into the House of Reps. election in Bogotá on my Medium here, which again I'd recommend if you have a deeper interest: https://medium.com/colombian-politics-and-elections/the-battle-for-bogot%C3%A1-1c70c5973bf?source=collection_home---4------0-----------------------

I'd be happy to give a summary of the main candidates for any Senate list or for any department for the House of Representatives if someone is interested in any specific list/department.
Logged
icc
Rookie
**
Posts: 189
Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #14 on: March 04, 2022, 04:23:03 PM »

Very interesting post on Bogotá. I wonder if you could give a brief overview of the candidates in the Valle too?

Also, do either Centro Esperanza or Nuevo Liberalismo have a realistic shot of seats in Bogotá and maybe scraping one in Antioquia or Valle?
Logged
WMS
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 6,562


Political Matrix
E: -3.48, S: -1.22

Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #15 on: March 04, 2022, 10:15:47 PM »

Quote from: Hashemite on his Medium account
All candidates in the Pacto said that Colombia is not a democracy. All candidates in the other two coalitions said that it is.

I checked Freedom House’s numbers and technically the Pacto is wrong, Colombia is an Electoral Democracy by their standards…albeit with serious Civil Liberties issues, freedom of assembly being a particular problem. This doubtless will settle that argument. Tongue

Colombia could’ve had Sergio Fajardo instead of Ivan Duque back in 2018 but noooo the left had to go with Gustavo Petro who was never going to win…
Logged
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #16 on: March 06, 2022, 04:13:37 PM »

Very interesting post on Bogotá. I wonder if you could give a brief overview of the candidates in the Valle too?

Thank you!

The Valle del Cauca's politics are dominated by Dilian Francisca Toro - former senator (2002-2013) and former governor (2016-2019) - who is at the helm of one of the most powerful political machines in Colombia, with the governor (Clara Luz Roldán, Dilian's heir and protégé), 8 mayors, 'quotas' in the cabinet in Cali (the mayor, Jorge Iván Ospina, is from the Greens but Toro supported him in 2019) and, in 2014, her group elected two senators and three representatives. One of those senators, Roosvelt Rodríguez, has since broken with her and endorsed Petro. Dilian's control is not absolute and not anywhere close to hegemonic (unlike the Char clan in Barranquilla) - her group suffered some major loses in the 2019 elections (Palmira and Buenaventura), but she is the most powerful political group in the Valle. She has two candidates for Senate on the Partido de la U's list (and she is likely also providing support to her top candidate, the Olympian Catherine Ibargüen, who has no votes of her own), rep. Norma Hurtado (who won the most votes in the U's list for the House in 2018, with 62k) and Juan Carlos Garcés (two-term departmental deputy).

The Valle elects 13 representatives. In 2018, the Liberals and the U both won roughly the same number of votes (~21%) and 4 seats each; followed by the CD, which got 10.8% and 2 seats, up from 1 in 2014. The Conservatives, Greens and CR won one seat each.

Partido de la U: With Roy Barreras now in the Pacto, the Partido de la U in the Valle is dominated by Toro, who is also the party's national president. Although some of its incumbents are not running again, the party still looks quite strong: senator José Ritter López is not running again, but his son Julián David López is the party's top candidate for the House, one incumbent seeking reelection to the House, Jorge Eliécer Tamayo and the party is renewed with new strong candidates: Victor Manuel Salcedo, a career politician from Buga close to Toro and controversial former governor Juan Carlos Abadía (2008-2010, removed from office for participating in electoral politics, related to Toro); Jhon Fredy Pimentel, former mayor of Jamundí; Jackeline Rentería, two-time Olympic bronze medallist in freestyle wrestling. There are also several candidates with less electoral/political experience and whose electoral value is less certain, like Gustavo Orozco Lince (young candidate campaigning on security and criticism of Cali mayor Ospina). The party's continued strength should ensure 3-4 seats.

Liberal Party: Four years ago, the Liberals won about 3,800 more votes than the U and 4 seats, up one from 2014. Three of its four incumbents are seeking reelection, and the fourth one leaves an heir: Juan Fernando Reyes Kuri (more progressive Liberal and hardworking congressman who is supporting Alejandro Gaviria), Adriana Gómez Millán (whose stronghold is Yumbo, north of Cali) and Álvaro Henry Monedero (supported by controversial former governor Juan Carlos Abadía) are running for second terms, while Leónardo Gallego Arroyave will seek to succeed his cousin Fabio Arroyave (who himself 'inherited' the seat from his father, Fabio Alonso Arroyave, in 2018). In 2018, the Liberals had three other candidates who, while unsuccessful, did bring over 20,000 votes each to the list, and only one of them is on the ballot again this year, so the Liberals are widely expected to lose tens of thousands of votes this year, which would likely cost them a seat.

Centro Democrático: Uribismo's strongest representative is Christian Garcés, first elected in 2018, seeking reelection in tandem with senator Gabriel Velasco (also a freshman). Garcés, a former Conservative councillor and departmental deputy who ran for governor against Toro in 2015, famously supports relaxing restrictive gun laws to allow civilians to carry firearms for self-defence (and now he is also campaigning against 'indoctrination' in schools by the teacher's union Fecode). He had about 40,500 votes, and he helped drag the other CD representative over the finish line - Milton Hugo Angulo, who had only 19,200 votes of his own in 2018 (the fewest of any of the 13 reps elected). The uribista list also includes Julio César García, former departmental deputy (with the most votes in 2019) supported by Susana Correa's faction (Correa, a former senator, is currently head of the Social Prosperity Department, DPS, which administers a bunch of benefits programs including the Ingreso Solidario created during COVID), and former representative Juan Carlos Salazar (a one-term rep, elected in 2010 for the trash collector party, PIN, ran again in 2018 for CR but got trounced), who appears to be supported by first-term uribista senator John Harold Suárez, who has a machine in Buga. Opinions appear to be split on whether uribismo's unpopularity will cost them a seat, or whether the new candidates will allow them to hold two seats.

Conservative Party: The Conservatives suffered some significant loses in the Valle in 2018, and fell to one seat in the House (who is retiring). It is trying to regain lost ground through former governor (2012-2015) Ubeimar Delgado, who is seeking to return to the Senate (where he served one term, 2006-2010; his nephew lost reelection in 2018). The party's main candidate for the House is Gustavo Adolfo Vélez, former mayor of Tuluá (2016-2019). There are few other strong candidates and I'm not sure how potent the old machines are without bureaucratic fuel, so the expectation is that the Conservatives may lose more ground (and perhaps their seat).

Cambio Radical: CR has three senators from the Valle now - José Luís Pérez, Carlos Fernando Motoa and Carlos Abraham Jiménez - but these three factions seem to be unable to coordinate on fórmulas for the lower house, so CR only won 6.7% and one seat in 2018 (a loss of one), who is not seeking reelection. CR's top candidate is a far-right uribista dissident (former CD departmental deputy), Juana Cataño, who has some sort of feud with Garcés. Cataño is another of those candidates who enjoy screaming a lot (she went viral for some video where she's yelling while campaigning and calling Colombia Humana a terrorist party of criminals), hurling epithets (in her case, 'mamerto') and dumb viral campaign billboards (hers asserts that the 2021 protests were not an estallido social but a toma guerrillera, ie. guerrilla attack/seizure). Unsurprisingly, she seems to be getting a lot of crossover support from Cabal's fans. CR's other strong candidate cuts a more traditional profile: Yonk Jairo Torres, former mayor of Candelaia (2016-2019) who faces corruption charges.

Greens: The Greens, in 2018, won 7.7% and 1 seat, thanks to a small surge in the voto de opinión in Cali - the seat went to Catalina Ortiz, a fajardista who got nearly 32,000 votes, the most of any candidate on the list by far. She is not seeking reelection and is supporting the list's top candidate, Duvalier Sánchez, a young politician who ran for governor in 2019 (finished third) with an anti-corruption-focused campaign 'against the giants'. The Greens here are divided between those who support Jorge Iván Ospina, the controversial (and now very unpopular) two-time mayor of Cali, and those who oppose him, because of his current incompetence (on full display during the 2021 protests) and/or his past history of opportunism, controversial political methods and various corruption scandals/rumours. Duvalier Sánchez is more critical of Ospina (though he supported him, out of partisan obligation, in 2019, the support was not reciprocal), but Ospina did place two of his people on the Greens' open list: Harbey Hurtado and Julián Andrés Zapata (close to Ospina's two brothers including former senator Mauricio Ospina). As elsewhere, the Green list includes candidates more to the left (who support the Pacto) and others more centrist.

Centro Esperanza/Nuevo Liberalismo: The Centro Esperanza is running, with the Nuevo Liberalismo, separate from the Greens - because of their unwillingness to be on the same list as Ospina's people (who, moreover, are on the party's left and closer to Petro). Their strongest senatorial candidate is Michel Maya (Dignidad), a former Green councillor in Cali and two-time mayoral candidate in Cali in 2015 and 2019 (for the Greens and then the ASI), a longstanding vocal critic of Ospina. His candidate for the House is Luis Alfredo Gómez, a former Conservative (now with Dignidad) who's worked in the public sector for many years. The other candidates are largely from civil society with little or no electoral history, so I imagine it will be difficult for this list to win a seat.

Pacto Histórico: The Valle is one of those places where the Pacto stands to gain a lot: the left is currently unrepresented in the House here, although the Polo has two senators from the region: Alexander López, who won a lot of votes in Buenaventura last time, and Wilson Arias, who has much fewer votes. The Pacto's closed list is led by José Alberto Tejada, a journalist and director of the Canal 2 who became famous for his supportive coverage of last year's protests in Cali. The feeling that Tejada was sort of 'imposed' as candidate by Petro divided the Pacto locally, with a faction rebelling and voting to open the list, a decision later reversed. Roy Barreras, who won about 30,000 votes in the Valle in 2018, put his wife Gloria Arizabaleta in the second spot (she has no electoral experience but has worked in the Procuraduría and Fiscalía thanks to her husband). As a result, the Polo, despite its proven strength in the Valle, was (as elsewhere), not treated very well: it only got the third, fourth and fifth spots, whose chances of winning are far more uncertain (the Polo's candidates are: Cristóbal Caicedo from Buenaventura, Alejandro Ocampo and Alfredo Mondragón). The Pacto is aiming to win 2-3 seats.

MIRA-CJL: The two Christian parties are running together; in 2018, they were separate and both just fell short of a seat - they won 5% and 4.5% respectively. Provided that they can win roughly the same number of votes as in 2018 or even a bit less, they're almost guaranteed a seat now.

Also, do either Centro Esperanza or Nuevo Liberalismo have a realistic shot of seats in Bogotá and maybe scraping one in Antioquia or Valle?

In Bogotá, the NL should be expected to do well enough to secure at least one seat - if they can't win a seat in Bogotá, they're in bad shape. For the Centro Esperanza, I'm not as sure - the strongest candidate for them strikes me as Jennifer Pedraza, who seems to be running a very active campaign and could do well if she can win some of Robledo's votes (I assume that Ingrid Betancourt's niece won't do all that well).

In Antioquia, the Centro Esperanza and NL are together separate from the Greens (who are pretty petrista in Antioquia) - and they have several candidates with some potential to do well: former Medellín councillor Oscar Guillermo Hoyos (brother of retiring U senator Germán Hoyos, whose machine is working for Alejandro Gaviria), former Polo rep. Victor Correa Vélez (now with Dignidad), Germán Vargas (backed by Medellín councillor Luis Bernardo Vélez) and former Medellín councillor Daniel Carvalho (now fajardista; elected for Fico's movement Creemos in 2015 and Todos Juntos in 2019). I'm not sure if this adds up to enough for a seat, however.
Logged
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #17 on: March 07, 2022, 09:00:17 PM »

The third edition of my weekly digest is out: please read it!

  • I've already talked about Duque's sabotage of Zuluaga's candidacy. Since then, things have perhaps only gotten worse for Zuluaga. Ernesto Macías said that he doesn't know what will happen with Zuluaga's candidacy and that the party is not thinking about him but about the country, which seems to be a 'kind' way of telling someone that you're dumping them. CD rep. and Senate candidate Edward Rodríguez went even further than Duque and said that he'd vote for Fico in the primary, although while still claiming that it is to arrive united behind Zuluaga in the first round to stop Petro (yeah, sure). I should also add that the law which regulates primaries (Law 1475 of 2011) makes it very hard for the winner of a primary to drop out, because then they'd need to reimburse the costs of organizing the primary...
  • With the candidacy registration period closing on March 11 for those not in a primary, they've started choosing running mates. Rodolfo Hernández, after a failed attempt in February with Paola Ochoa, found someone: Marelen Castillo, a very little known educator/academic. She's a woman, but I doubt she adds very much to his candidacy. Zuluaga picked Alicia Eugenia Silva, an economist, who served in Mockus' two administrations in Bogotá as secretary of government and private secretary. She is also relatively unknown. Enrique Gómez (MSN) chose Carlos Cuartas, a businessman who is also fifth on the party's closed list for Senate. Peñalosa said that, if he wins the primary, Dilian Francisca Toro would be his running mate: the 'electoral baroness' of the Valle gave him the Partido de la U's endorsement and she's become an important part of his campaign, which is relying on her machine to get out the vote. They've campaigned together at mass events in her stronghold. Nothing very interesting (yet), but it's possible some of the VP candidates are just placeholders until final picks are made after March 13, given that candidates will then have until March 18 to modify their registration.
  • Duque will finally get a meeting with Biden in Washington after months of desperately trying to get an appointment. Biden was glad to freeze him out for many months in payback for uribismo interfering in the 2020 election in Trump's favour.
  • There was manic late night speculation last night because CR put out a campaign ad waxing lyrical about Vargas Lleras' political career which is definitely very odd... which obviously led to speculation about Vargas Lleras launching a last-minute presidential candidacy. Vargas Lleras has since gone out to deny that he would run, as he had already done back in February, when he harshly reprimanded David Luna for saying that he was convinced Vargas Lleras (Luna's ally) would run. Still doesn't explain the point of that ad... showing Alex Char that he's still the boss in CR? Some weird belief that Vargas Lleras' "heroic" political career will help the party on Sunday?


  • A corruption scandal involves Liberal senator Mario Castaño (a senator from Caldas first elected in 2018 now seeking reelection), who is accused of leading a corruption network which embezzled money from public contracts and pocketing big bribes from them. Castaño says that he was drunk in a recording where he boasts about getting a big contract in Chocó that will generate lots of revenue.
  • Pacto senatorial candidate Alex Florez, who is close to Medellín mayor Daniel Quintero, was seen pushing/elbowing Susana Boreal, a Pacto candidate for the House of Reps. in Antioquia, during a campaign event. He was apparently pissy because he felt she was taking his place and he wanted to be next to Petro. This elbowgate has caused internal controversy in the Pacto, with the feminist groups in the coalition calling on him to step aside (too late for that).
  • Antanas Mockus endorsed Fajardo. Notorious homophobe and Duque's former ambassador to France Viviane Morales endorsed Barguil, who said she'd lead the referendum to overturn the ConCourt's decision on abortion -- she has experience in leading unconstitutional referendums against court decisions, because as a Liberal senator (2014-18) she led the charge for an referendum to ban same-sex adoptions.
Logged
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #18 on: March 08, 2022, 08:15:52 PM »

So that may not have been the end of it for the Vargas Lleras story...

La Silla Vacía says that CR requested an appointment to register a presidential candidate with the Registraduría, with the filing deadline this Friday, March 11.

El Colombiano reveals the strategy that could lead to a Vargas Lleras candidacy: a stand-in candidate will be registered by March 11, most likely Germán Córdoba, the president of the party, to save a spot for the party, while Vargas Lleras pays attention to how the primaries and congressional elections go on Sunday. Parties then have until March 18, next Friday, to modify their registrations, so this would be when Vargas Lleras, if he is to run, would take his place by replacing the filler candidate. All that would explain the bizarre primetime video on Sunday night...

Just when you thought the field was finally starting to settle down, it gets crazy again. As I see it, Vargas Lleras' plan is for a last-minute express candidacy as an 'elder statesman' to 'save' Colombia from Petro and 'populism'. This is based on a (not inaccurate) analysis of what's going on: Petro is the favourite, with a good chance of running away with it because no one is able to even catch up to him, with the centre an hopeless disaster and the right's candidates not particularly strong (unlike Duque in 2018 after the primary), so there could theoretically be a viable opening for a centre-right candidate who could emerge as the one strong alternative to block Petro.

Whether this happens will depend on what happens on Sunday. I think if Fajardo/Galán win the centrist primary, then Alejandro Gaviria's machines would be orphaned, and if Fico wins the right-wing primary, the charista machines would also be orphaned (although Char would not be able to legally support Vargas Lleras) and there would be a bigger opening on the centre-right (leaving Fico as the de facto or official uribista/hard-right candidate). Will this work? I have very, very strong doubts. For one, it's more likely that if he runs, Vargas Lleras will only further divide the right rather than unite it. If 2018 wasn't Vargas Lleras' year, then 2022 definitely won't be. I really doubt 'elder statesman who thinks Colombian politics are the same as in the 90s' is the profile that's gonna stop Petro in 2022. I'm also very much unconvinced that a stubborn man like him has learned any lessons from his disastrous 2018 campaign. Also, while the usual suspects in the media (hi, Semana!) will likely salivate at the prospect of another hope to stop their boogeyman and heap effusive praise on Vargas Lleras, the reality is that he's still as unpopular as he ended up being in 2018.

Two of his greatest hits: the coscorrón and the 'preguntas tan chimbas'





Logged
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #19 on: March 10, 2022, 02:27:18 PM »

It had been a while since we had gotten a good peñalosada out of Kike Peñalosa, but oh boy this one's a good one: https://www.pulzo.com/elecciones-2022/enrique-penalosa-dijo-que-recupero-espacio-publico-kiev-ucrania-PP1253497

In Kyiv I worked a lot, for example, to get cars off the sidewalks and it was very successful. I managed to recover public space in Kyiv, which was a disaster.

This man's narcissistic obsession with sidewalks and cement is amazing. It's a pity he didn't tell the good people of Ukraine about how underground subways are like rat tunnels which smell like piss or how gas-guzzling BRT are the highest form of human civilization.

In other news, they've recreated the National Front, this time united against abortion rights and hating uppity feminists



Also, please take a moment to think about Biden on this difficult day for him, where he needs to deal with the imbecile that is Duque

Logged
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #20 on: March 12, 2022, 04:24:41 PM »

I've published a very long preview post on Medium, which I still feel is incomplete and inadequate. But you have my eternal gratitude if you bother reading all of it: https://medium.com/colombian-politics-and-elections/2022-colombian-election-digest-iv-election-preview-6312e13e5fc. I will, however, post a shorter summary of my disjointed thoughts here a bit later today.

Here are some of the ballot papers:

Centre


Pacto


Equipo

I love Char still wearing his trademark hat for the picture and Barguil taking his "tough guy" pose

Senate

For the first time, the 'ethnic' constituencies are not on the same ballot (same for the House), so this should hopefully reduce the number of invalid votes by quite a bit (will also be interesting to see how many people vote in the ethnic constituencies now that you need to ask for it).
Logged
President Punxsutawney Phil
TimTurner
Atlas Politician
Atlas Legend
*****
Posts: 41,124
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #21 on: March 12, 2022, 05:01:05 PM »

I've published a very long preview post on Medium, which I still feel is incomplete and inadequate. But you have my eternal gratitude if you bother reading all of it: https://medium.com/colombian-politics-and-elections/2022-colombian-election-digest-iv-election-preview-6312e13e5fc. I will, however, post a shorter summary of my disjointed thoughts here a bit later today.

Here are some of the ballot papers:
[snip]
For the first time, the 'ethnic' constituencies are not on the same ballot (same for the House), so this should hopefully reduce the number of invalid votes by quite a bit (will also be interesting to see how many people vote in the ethnic constituencies now that you need to ask for it).
I've read it all. I'd like to thank you for keeping us abreast of Colombian political developments and would like to express gratitude for your sharing insights with us.
One thing I'd like to ask is, what is the overall chance of Petro being elected at this precise moment in time? Percentage terms, best guess?
Logged
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #22 on: March 12, 2022, 07:26:04 PM »

I've read it all. I'd like to thank you for keeping us abreast of Colombian political developments and would like to express gratitude for your sharing insights with us.
One thing I'd like to ask is, what is the overall chance of Petro being elected at this precise moment in time? Percentage terms, best guess?

You're welcome. I'm not good at probabilities but I think Petro has an over 50% chance of winning now: all others are failing to measure up to him, their attacks on him are either desperate or not sticking well. But he still has vulnerabilities and will need to be more cautious after next week once the field is cleared up and the challengers on the right and centre are clearer.

Just a few comments and questions going into Sunday:

Presidential primaries
There are 3 big basic questions: how many people vote in them (all together), how many people vote in each primary (which one gets the most votes) and who wins in each of them?

In 2018, 9.6 million voted in the two primaries (6.1 million on the right, 3.5 million on the left), even though neither of them was very competitive, unlike this year. This year we could be looking at up to 16 million votes in the 3 of them.

The Pacto Histórico is likely to have the highest turnout (they are aiming for 5 million), with the right-wing Equipo por Colombia not too far behind (also looking at around 5 million) and the hopeless centre likely with the lowest turnout.

-Pacto Histórico: Petro will win, obviously. Somewhere up to 80%, aiming at 4 million votes himself. Francia Márquez could be second, which would be a big win for her, especially if she gets over 500,000 votes, and would be a welcome black eye to all the (white) men who weren't too keen in seeing her disturb their little circle. Camilo Romero will likely be third if he's not second. The other two, especially Saade, are nobodies and will get scraps.

-Equipo por Colombia: I think this one is quite open: I can see a path for Fico, Char and Barguil in this one. I explain it more in my post. My boring guess, in line with polls, is that Fico wins as he's probably the strongest candidate in this one (a Char presidential candidacy going to May would be disastrous. The guy can't be bothered to do anything besides TikTok and vacations in Miami). Watch out for Barguil: if his strategy of depending on Conservative machines putting votes for him as they put votes for their candidates works out well, he could have a real chance. This primary will likely have some strong regional differences: I expect Char and Barguil to dominate the Caribbean coast (I will be curious to see how many votes the Pacto v. Equipo primaries get here), Fico strongest in Antioquia but probably doing well elsewhere too, Peñalosa probably strong in Bogotá and the Valle (but not sure how many votes he'll get in Bogotá).

-Centro Esperanza: Fajardo is the favourite, if only because of the advantage of having already run before and having the highest name rec. Not really because of his campaign, which, like everything else with the centrist coalition, has been uninspiring, insipid and slow. But, in the polls, this primary has the highest MOE and the most undecideds. Galán is the closest to Fajardo, and his campaign wants to believe that they've closed the gap and are within striking distance of first. Alejandro Gaviria only stands a chance if turnout is so low that a lot of the votes will have been put by the machines backing him, like former governor Jorge Rey in Cundinamarca. Amaya and Robledo don't have a realistic shot at winning.

Congressional elections
A lot of questions because congressional elections are a mess, very complex to understand, feature a thousand and one candidates and things and are a mix of competing local and regional dynamics. There are still a few overarching questions here:

-Turnout: It was 49% in 2018, which was the highest congressional turnout since 1990 (yes, Colombia is a low turnout country). There was a surge in urban turnout in 2018, due at least in part to the primaries, but turnout in congressional elections still differ substantially from turnout in presidential elections (i.e. the two are basically not correlated at all!). To grossly oversimplify this is because of the famed maquinarias working at full throttle in congressional elections. There were also, in 2018 as in past elections since 2006, a sh(tload of invalid and unmarked votes because the ballot design was crap, which has thankfully (finally) been kind of fixed (only took you guys 16 years). Turnout is expected to be 'high' again in 2022 and could finally break 50%. Let's see how much the primaries drive turnout (and also the other way around). Because of population growth + higher turnout, the value of the 3% threshold will likely increase to be around 500k-550k, so parties will need more votes to break the threshold and more votes to retain their seats.

-Largest parties and overall balance: In 2018, the largest parties were the CD in the Senate (19) and Liberals in the House (35). Some expect the Pacto to be the biggest party in the Senate, though probably not in the House. The outgoing Congress was dominated, as always, by the traditional and neo-traditional parties and leaned to the right. This new one could be more balanced with a stronger left, but probably not with as much 'renewal' (turnover) as some might hope for.

-Number of parties (Senate): 8 of the 16 lists are certain or nearly certain of crossing the 3% threshold with relative ease (CD, CR, Lib, Con, La U, Grn/CE, PH, MIRA-CJL). Two are hovering around the threshold (NL, Fuerza Ciudadana). One other might make it in (Estamos Listas) but this strikes me as wishful thinking from people who like them (I don't blame them, I think they're great too!).

By party:

-CD: Uribismo won 19 senators and 32 reps in 2018. For reasons I've touched upon before, it is expected to suffer some significant loses. They won 2.5 million votes in 2018, but their core vote is 1.5 million (what the CD won in local council races in 2019). They could be reduced to 14-15 or fewer seats in the Senate.

-Pacto: They are expected to win between 10 and 20 senators. But there's a big difference between just 10 seats and 20 seats. To do well, Petro's efforts to presidentialize the congressional elections need to work out and hope that those who support him in the primary will also vote for the Pacto for both houses of Congress. In other words, how many votes can he 'transfer' from his primary to the congressional election? If he wins 4 million votes, even if he's only able to transfer half to the other ballots, that's still a very solid base. Kind of overshadowed, but I'm curious to see how the Pacto manages in the lower house: this is a tougher nut to crack for them, but they absolutely need to make significant gains and win seats outside of Bogotá, starting with a much stronger presence in Antioquia, the Valle and the Caribbean coast.

-CR: CR was the big winner in 2018 (16 senators, 30 reps), but they're on the defensive this year. Some losses are to be expected. Their recipe is a combo of voto de opinión and the shady, sketchy unsavoury machines that fuelled their success in 2018. Including the Char clan's more modest (defensive) ambitions this year.

-Liberals: It's wild how despite not having a presidential candidate of their own, their caucus/members going off in a thousand different directions from left to right with different candidates and a list full of trash, the Liberals are still sought after like the most popular girl in school. César Gaviria's strategy is to to maintain its strong presence in Congress (14 senators, 35 reps), in order to increase its bargaining power afterwards when negotiating the party’s support for a presidential candidate. They need to compensate for several losses and defections, so retaining what they have will be tough though not impossible.

-Conservatives: The Conservatives lost a few seats in 2018 (-4 in the Senate to 14, -6 in the House to 21 seats). I feel that it doesn't look too bad for them this year, if machines still work relatively well, as they're not losing too many incumbents and those that are leaving have left heirs behind so there is theoretically a way to make up lost votes.

-La U: From a peak of 28 senators in 2010, they've lost seats in both houses for two elections in a row (down to 14 senators in 2018, even fewer now). Numbers are inauspicious for them. Once again, their best hope at saving what they can will be the remaining machines and the sketchy politicians. I do wonder if Catherine Ibargüen will even get elected (wouldn't be surprised if she isn't).

-Greens/Centro Esperanza: This is the story of a coalition that clearly had high hopes but which then decided to commit seppuku: the Greens dilapidated their political capital because of their divisions over the presidential election, while the rest of the centrists likely killed their momentum with their petty infighting and endless psychodrama. However, they can count on the Greens and their structures/networks (machines?) as well as several candidates who can attract a nice chunk of the urban voto de opinión (first and foremost, of course, their top candidate Humberto de la Calle). In 2018, the Greens got 1.3 million votes and 9 seats, but this was thanks in large part to Mockus' 550k votes, now up for grabs...

-MIRA-CJL: Together, the two parties won just under a million votes and 6 seats in 2018. Can they hold that with a single open list? Can they make further gains?

-Nuevo Liberalismo: They really want to do well and be the voto de opinión phenomenon of 2022 (like the Greens were in 2018-19), to build and entrench the party as a long-term 'liberal alternative'. Their path to success goes through, in every case, a very good result in Bogotá. The ConCourt's decision from last year reviving them exempts them from the 3% threshold until 2026, so they can live to fight another day regardless but obviously they'll want to do well now.

-Fuerza Ciudadana: Can they pass the threshold? Their recipe is a combo of the governorship's machine in Magdalena + dispersed left-wing vote for some of the more well-known left-wing names on their list (like Hollman Morris but also more 'influencer'-types).

-Liga (Rodolfo's movement, only in Santander): This will be the only way to see how 'real' Rodolfo Hernández's viral buzz is: his personalist movement, running only for the House in Santander. Given 2019 numbers and his strong favourite son/regionalist vote there, the Liga could do quite well: clearly, the local traditional politicians in Santander are worried, and some have preferred to support Rodolfo Hernández. Indeed, a *lot* of the top candidates on the Liga's closed list come from the groups/machines of traditional politicians that have gotten behind Rodolfo (contradicting his anti-corruption rhetoric), or were close as recently as 2019 to the politicians that he has branded as crooks/corrupt.

-Afro seats: They're usually a freak show and this year is no different, with 48 lists competing, a lot of them with controversial candidates (most notably this year would be the daughter of convicted parapolítico Juan Carlos Martínez Sinisterra) or the pawns of powerful gamonales. But Francia Márquez's Soy Porque Somos movement is running a list (she herself ran in 2018 and got 7,900 votes, fourth place), and perhaps stands a better chance now--but she faces disloyal competition from within the Pacto, the ADA, a party which obtained legal recognition by winning one of the Afro seats in 2018 (and has now used that status to endorse candidates like Roy Barreras), which has its own list.

-Peace constituencies (Citrep/Ctep): For the first time this year, 16 additional representatives will be elected representing the victims of the armed conflict in the rural areas of the regions most affected by the conflict (in 16 constituencies, or Citrep). The theory is that they will give a voice to the victims and to the peripheral, marginalized and forgotten regions which suffered so much. But the election has been quite dispiriting and a disgrace: candidates have been unable to get the public financing they are entitled to, they've faced threats of violence from illegal groups, they need to compete in regions where the state's presence remains very weak and where illegal groups and economies are strong and in many (most?) constituencies the seat may be coopted by local traditional political clans or candidates ties to politics who don't really represent victims' interests. The most scandalous case is Citrep 12 (Sierra Nevada-Perijá), where one of the main candidates is Jorge Rodrigo Tovar, the son of former paramilitary commander/mass murderer Jorge 40 (expelled from transitional justice, extradited to the US in 2008 and deported back to Colombia in 2020, accused of homicides, massacres, drug trafficking and other major human rights abuses). Many other candidates in the constituency have dropped out and claim that they face threats and intimidation which prevent them from campaigning in certain regions, and blame Tovar of being behind that. There are similar cases of 'coopting' by traditional clans in the Catatumbo, Pacific coast of Nariño, southern Córdoba...

-The top senators: These elections are interesting because a lot of prominent senators are not running again (or, for Uribe and Mockus, have already left the Senate) and the Pacto is running a closed list (in 2018, all parties which won seats had open lists except for CJL). This means it is unlikely that any candidate will get the huge preferential votes that Uribe (890k), Mockus (550k) and even Robledo (229k) got in 2018. Who will be the 'most voted senator' this year? The centrists hope that Humberto de la Calle can be like Mockus and be a voto de opinión phenomenon and get hundreds of thousands of votes. It will also be interesting to look at the races within the open lists in certain parties: CD (Miguel Uribe vs. María Fernanda Cabal - I'd bet on Cabal, I think Uribe Turbay is a wet pizza), CR (it was lightweight Arturo Char in 2018 - showing the power of charismo - will it still be him?), La U (Ibargüen will definitely not be the top one, I think) etc.
Logged
icc
Rookie
**
Posts: 189
Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #23 on: March 13, 2022, 02:15:50 PM »

Is there a good way to follow along later?
Logged
Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 32,401
Colombia


WWW Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #24 on: March 13, 2022, 02:39:53 PM »

Is there a good way to follow along later?

There will be the preconteo on the Registraduría, hopefully they fixed their tech problems in time. No link yet, but should be up in about an hour and a half when polls close. Otherwise, the numbers will be reported in some way by the main newspapers and media outlets, although I've always preferred the Registraduría's website since they have maps and a decent interface. https://www.registraduria.gov.co/

I should also be around for a lot of it except for dinner, so I'll have things to say!

I've been following along the Silla Vacía's tweetstream throughout the day and my main takeaway from the anecdotal evidence put together is that turnout is going to be high, probably higher than 2018. I don't want to pointlessly speculate on who this is good for.
Logged
Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 ... 10  
« previous next »
Jump to:  


Login with username, password and session length

Terms of Service - DMCA Agent and Policy - Privacy Policy and Cookies

Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines

Page created in 0.116 seconds with 11 queries.