Gustavo Petro, a former urban guerrilla who once spent time in prison for his political beliefs, won Colombia’s presidential election on Sunday and is expected to introduce the most left-wing government in the country’s history.
Petro won 50.5% of the vote against 47.3% of his only rival, 77-year-old populist businessman Rodolfo Hernández, according to provisional official results. His total of 11.3 million votes was the highest in Colombian electoral history. Hernandez accepted the defeat in a few hours in a short video message.
The result represents a radical change for the South American nation, which for decades has been ruled by moderate and conservative politicians, mostly from the established elite.
A member of the M-19 guerrilla group in the 1980s, Petro, who was arrested for illegal possession of weapons and said he had been tortured in custody, has since served as senator, congressman and mayor of Bogotá. . But he had failed in two previous bids for the best job to break Colombia’s closed political system.
His victory means that Latin America’s third most populous nation, with a population of 50 million, and the fourth largest economy, will have its first black vice president, Francia Márquez, an environmental and social activist who grew up in the United States. rural poverty in the south plagued by violence. -west.
“This means a new model of government, different from what has been seen before in Colombia,” said Daniela Cuéllar, a senior consultant at FTI Consulting in Bogotá.
“In Colombia, as in many Latin American countries with a history of inequality, unemployment and violence, all exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, people are looking for different forms of government, and Petro’s victory is this.”
Gustavo Petro fans celebrate at the Movistar Arena in Bogota © Carlos Ortega / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
The result was that Petro’s supporters flocked to the streets to celebrate, from the steamy shores of the Caribbean and the Atlantic to the mountains of the Andes and the remote populations of the Amazon Basin.
In the city of Villavicencio, once a focus of Marxist guerrilla violence, his supporters fought a torrential downpour to drive through the streets on motorbikes honking their horns. On the Pasto plateau, near the border with Ecuador, hundreds gathered in the center of the city, embracing each other with joy.
The business community will be less satisfied. Petro’s radical call for a review of Colombia’s economic model has frightened investors.
Currency, peso and local assets are likely to suffer, although as Monday is a public holiday in Colombia, the full effect may not be felt immediately.
“We are going to see volatility in Colombian assets in the short term,” said Ani de la Quintana, associate director of Control Risks in Bogota. “It is clear that the peso and the markets will react negatively. The peso closed at $ 3,912 on Friday. Who knows how much more it will depreciate now? “
“We could also see a significant capital flight from Colombia, as happened in Peru with the elections there last year. In the medium term, rating agencies Moody’s and Fitch could downgrade Colombia even further.
Gustavo Petro arrives at a polling station in Bogota on Sunday © Daniel Munoz / AFP / Getty Images
Petro’s policy proposals include a ban on oil exploration, opencast mining and fracking in a fossil fuel-dependent nation for about half of its export earnings. He says the country should focus on manufacturing and agriculture.
The 62-year-old is committed to wholesale agrarian reform, a wealth tax on the country’s 4,000 largest fortunes and the repeal of two-decade-old laws that liberalized the labor market.
Its tax reform plans are aimed at raising at least $ 10 billion a year, mainly by imposing taxes on corporate dividends, offshore assets and large rural estates. The measure “would affect between 4,000 and 5,000 people in Colombia, but would bring social justice, stimulate production and give us the source of money we need,” he told the Financial Times in a recent interview.
It has pledged to use revenue to fund universal free higher education and a minimum wage for 1.3 million people, and to reduce the public deficit, which reached 7.1 percent of gross domestic product by the end of 2021.
“We look forward to maintaining a constructive dialogue with the new government,” said Bruce Mac Master, president of Colombia’s National Business Association. “Petro is an economist. Understand economic problems. The important thing now is to call it a very good cabinet. “
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Despite his victory, Petro can fight to put his most radical proposals into practice. His coalition, the Historic Pact, holds only 15 percent of the seats in both houses of Congress.
“The coming weeks will be key to seeing what kind of alliances it can form,” Cuéllar said.
Petro will take over the presidency on August 7 when right-wing incumbent Iván Duque leaves office.
Duque’s government is deeply unpopular despite strong economic growth, and Sunday’s result marked a setback for Colombian conservatism, which had left its weight behind the unorthodox Hernandez in a frantic attempt to keep the left afloat.