Colombia The soccer World Cup beats with illusions greater than those of politics. The team has won its first match and on Wednesday it faces the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Football is the ephemeral moment of national harmony. Before the team led by Luis Díaz appears at the Guadalajara Stadium against the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Colombians have a greater challenge that deeply divides the waters. This Sunday they must decide whether they want the far-right Abelardo de la Espriella or his left-wing rival, Iván Cepeda, as the president who must begin to replace on August 7 Gustavo Petro. The lawyer and businessman obtained 43.8% of the votes on May 31, against 41% for his rival from the Historical Pact. The difference surprised locals and strangers. It had not been contemplated by the polls that now give between 3.9% and 7.6% advantage to a candidate who also has the enthusiastic blessing of Donald Trump.
What the team’s jersey sentimentally unites, politics separates. De la Espriella has used that symbol until justice said that that garment belonged to everyone. The second round of the presidential elections is for him “a final.” He has managed to rally the entire right-wing spectrum behind him, the most well-off urban sectors and those in the impoverished middle class see in an eccentric millionaire with a private plane and luxurious clothes a model of personal improvement. The candidate who calls himself “the tiger” and considers its electoral base as “little tigers” and “tigresses”, it also receives the support of the Pentecostal churches and the so-called “military family”; part of the business community, who never loved Petro, the “showbiz” and former football stars like “Pibe” Valderrama. On the eve of the war, not only models, DJs, cyclists and athletes They decided to sing their vote. Even Carlos Lehder, founder of the Medellín Cartel along with Pablo Escobarmade known his enthusiasm for the Defenders of the Homeland candidate. Nothing compares at this time with Trump’s role. The Republican billionaire has been emphatic in communicating his sympathies for the third consecutive time. “Go out and vote for ‘El Tigre’,” The Republican magnate asked as guarantor of who would be his new great ally in Latin America. “He will not disappoint.”
Petro has a popularity of 51%, according to a recent survey by the National Consulting Center (CNC). Part of that acceptance comes from the four million people who are no longer poor. These adhesions do not coincide in the surveys with the preferences in this second round. The president has denounced the existence of a “international far-right alliance” that make up his Argentine colleague Javier Miley and the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahuand that “with the help of US authorities, its allies and drug traffickers, it is now flowing to Colombia to buy votes that will elect a defender of the genocides.”
The great challenge
On May 31, Cepeda had the largest number of votes for a left-wing candidate in the history of that South American country. They have chosen it popular sectors, young people, indigenous communities and unions, intellectuals and sexual dissidents. He has carried out his electoral campaign at a disadvantage. Without his opponent’s money or Washington’s preference. Believe that he “hidden vote”, The one that the pollsters’ radar does not register will be decisive and in your favor on Sunday night. “I make a sincere call to those who accompany us: do not let yourself be carried away by hatred or provocation. Let us respond to aggression with arguments, to lies with the truth and to violence with serenity.” The former mayor of Bogotá, Claudia Lópezwas the one that most emphatically sided with Cepeda. He did so after the candidate accepted the participation of the private sector in the health system.
The first turn was an x-ray of Colombia’s electoral culture: 42.15% of citizens able to pay mostly stayed at home. A percentage could not go to the polls because they lived in areas of armed conflict. The left also needs this universe of voters to reverse the course of events. And also from the political center that has been very critical of Petro but observes with astonishment the rise of the ultra-rightist.
The usual violence
While Cepeda has presented himself as the continuator of social reforms favorable to those who have the leastDe la Espriella has prioritized the issue of security in his electoral offer. Violence is a crucial issue in Colombia. The Government has highlighted that the homicides They have decreased by 4.6% during the first months of this year. However, armed disputes have intensified in areas where there are drug trafficking groups, paramilitaries, the remnants of the FARC that did not sign the 2016 peace agreement and the guerrilla of the National Liberation Army (ELN). De la Espriella not only promised “destripar” to those factions. The “hard hand” has been accompanied by biblical resonances. More than Colombian president and candidate for Defenders of the Homeland, the millionaire wants to be a new Cyrus the Great. That Persian king facilitated the departure of the ancient people of Israel from Babylon. By looking in the mirror of the former monarch, De la Espriella won the support of the evangelical churches that already considered him a defender of the traditional family and a combatant of “gender ideology.” The lawyer is seen as the continuity and improvement of the former president Alvaro Uribe. The leader of the Colombian right so far this century, was summoned days ago by a prosecutor delegated to the Supreme Court for his alleged participation in the formation of paramilitary groups when he governed the region of Antioquia. “It’s an electoral plot,” he said.
Echoes of ancient divisions
The FARC dissidents decided to intensify their activities on the eve of the second round. A way to agree with De la Espriella and reactivate decade-long clashes ago, when a majority of society decided to reject in a popular consultation the agreement between the Government of President Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC to put an end to an armed conflict of more than half a century. Not coincidentally, the diary recalled The Spectatorthe far-right prevailed in a good part of the urban centers, regions more integrated into the national economy and territories opposed to that understanding. “I feel the country like when the ‘No’ won in the plebiscite”said Angélika Rettberg, dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Universidad de los Andes. In his opinion, Petro’s desire for “total peace” started from “a correct diagnosis.” However, the president “failed to develop a coherent strategy to simultaneously manage different processes” of negotiations with so many armed factions. The distance between the objectives and what was achieved was expressed at the polls.
night fears
At the end of the first round, Petro made critical remarks about the functioning of the vote count that favored De la Espriella. Everything ended in a presidential outburst through X. Not even Cepeda accompanied those considerations beyond May 31. The possibility of something similar happening on Sunday night in the event of a victory for the extreme right has been warned by the Bogotá newspaper The Time. “Some figures from the Historical Pact have suggested that a defeat for their candidate would bring about serious disruptions to public order.. It is unprecedented to make mentions of violence before the election results and without even knowing how whoever is elected will act. It is played with the country and with citizen tranquility.” For the publication “It is irresponsible to play with candles (fire)because the sparks in a powder keg will later be very difficult to extinguish.”
De la Espriella feels like a winner in advance and spoke to Trump as a future colleague. “We will share, you and I, a responsibility given to us by God and the People: fighting the radical left. President, You are an inspiration to those who, like you are doing, We want to change politics forever.” Philosophy professor Francisco Cortés Rodas bristled when he read it. “If De la Espriella wins, we will enter the times in which revenge has returned.”
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