2022 Colombian Election Digest V: Catching up and election preview
I wish to apologize for not publishing more posts on this Medium in April and May — my attention was focused elsewhere, on the French elections.
But the first round of the Colombian presidential election is now creeping up on us: it is on May 29.
In this post, I wish to catch up on some of the main events in the presidential campaign in April and early May.
For more information about the presidential primaries and congressional elections from March, please read my results analysis as it provides necessary context for this post.
The big picture
The big picture of the Colombian presidential election appeared quite straightforward until recently but now has an unpredictable and exciting finish in store. Gustavo Petro, the candidate of the left, remains the clear favourite in the first round but could face a tougher second round (which will take place on June 19), depending on who he faces.
Until mid-May, his main rival seemed to be Federico ‘Fico’ Gutiérrez, the candidate of the right. Rodolfo Hernández and Sergio Fajardo seemed stucked fighting for third, neither of them able to break through, but there has been a late surge by the populist Rodolfo Hernández, who could very well beat Fico for second now.
Petro consistently enjoys a double-digit lead in the first round. Fico is still in second in almost every poll, but there has been a rapid surge by Rodolfo Hernández. The first evidence of the rodolfista surge was a CNC poll paid for by a businessman, which showed Rodolfo Hernández at 16%, just 7% behind Fico. This surge has since been confirmed by the final polls (before the last week polling blackout): all now show Rodolfo Hernández over 20%. However, there’s still substantial differences on the margin between second and third: only one pollster, CELAG (a left-wing think tank, which has a left-wing bias) shows Rodolfo ahead of Fico (by 0.3%), while CNC’s last poll for Semana has Rodolfo within 2% of Fico (almost within the margin of error). The last Invamer poll for Caracol (considered by some as the ‘gold standard’ poll) has Rodolfo 6.2% from second. Guarumo has a right-wing bias and still has Fico unusually high (31% and within single digits of Petro).
Rodolfo Hernández’s last-minute surge means that it is quite possible that he will make the runoff instead of Fico. In March, April and early May, it seemed inevitable that it would be a Petro/Fico runoff, as the media narrative had established after the March 13 primaries. But it could instead be a Petro/Rodolfo runoff.
Gustavo Petro’s advantage in the runoff is not as big, and could lose to Rodolfo Hernández. This shows how latently polarizing he remains despite obvious gains since 2018 — although Petro can win (unlike probably in 2018), there’s still a strong anti-Petro sentiment that will somewhat limit his margin of victory in the runoff. He has a clear ceiling in the runoff.
Polls show that Petro would likely defeat Fico in the runoff, while the latest polls for a Petro/Rodolfo runoff now that Rodolfo Hernández would be the strongest candidate against Petro in the runoff. The CNC poll for Semana has them tied at 40.5%. The Brazilian pollster AtlasIntel, which claims to have been the best pollster in the 2020 US elections, even has Rodolfo Hernández beating Petro by nearly 10 points (but this is the same pollster that had Marine Le Pen defeating Emmanuel Macron at one point in April…).
After the primaries, Fico got a big primary bump — a combination of a sudden name recognition growth spurt, a primary bump, the consolidation of the right/uribismo behind him and centre’s bellyflop in the primaries creating a left/right narrative. The right probably looked artificially weaker than it actually was in pre-primary polls because it was split over several candidates with low name recognition or high unfavourables (Zuluaga). On the other hand, Petro’s primary bump looked less impressive because he already had high name recognition and was already the presumptive nominee and frontrunner.
This brought Fico up from the single digits to around 20–25%. But since then his momentum stalled. On the other hand, Petro not only retained his lead in the polls but even gained a few points — getting above 40%. Despite one damaging scandal (see later), his momentum has remained strong and his first round lead unassailable. The last polls, however, do seem to suggest that Petro may have hit his (first round) ceiling, somewhere around 40–45%.
The good polling for Petro has reignited his supporters’ hopes that Petro will win in the first round. While he may come close, there is still nothing to suggest that a first round victory is any more likely. As I wrote in my results analysis, a first round victory will likely require 9–9.8 million votes. In the primaries, Petro’s coalition, the Pacto Histórico, had a primary turnout of 5.8 million.
Sergio Fajardo has been stuck in fourth and has continued to slide in the final weeks. He was hurt by the failure of the Centro Esperanza coalition and its low turnout primary (only 2.28 million votes vs. 5.8 million for the Pacto and 4.1 million for the right; Fajardo only won 723,000 votes himself). After that, he’s been unable to make the centre visible, relevant or viable.
Unsurprisingly, the other candidates have been invisible (despite their best attempts to get some attention). Luis Pérez has read the writing on the wall and dropped out of the race, probably a good idea to save his name and hope for some attention later on. Ingrid Betancourt dropped out on May 20 to endorse Rodolfo Hernández.
The Rodolfista surge
The big story of the final week of campaigning is Rodolfo Hernández’s surge in the closing moments, only days before the election.
Rodolfo Hernández, “the engineer” (el ingeniero), is a 77-year-old civil engineer, former businessman and former mayor of Bucaramanga (2016–2019) who has become the viral phenomenon of the campaign. He is a brash, eccentric and somewhat foul-mouthed populist with an emphatic and strident anti-corruption and anti-politics discourse, expressed in ‘popular’ (colloquial, simple, unscripted, politically incorrect) language.
He has built a genuine, spontaneous grassroots base in good part through social media — in 2021, La Silla Vacía called him the ‘Facebook candidate’. As mayor and then as candidate, he has had a weekly Facebook livestream which he has as a platform to double down on his anti-corruption/anti-politics creed, call his opponents (and politicians in general) all kinds of names and insults, present his ideas and connect with supporters. Many of his supporters first heard of him through Facebook, particularly given that Rodolfo Hernández doesn’t like leaving Bucaramanga much and considers mass political rallies to be a waste of money (and a scam). He is also the self-proclaimed “king of TikTok”, where he has 400,000 followers and posts funny videos.
His grassroots social media base of rodolfistas have compensated for the lack of a strong political movement. His ‘party’, the Liga de Gobernantes Anticorrupción is very much a personalist movement with a weak organization. It only managed to make the congressional ballot in Santander for the House of Representatives, where it won the most votes and elected two representatives. In 2019, the Liga was the strongest party in Bucaramanga in the city council and departmental assembly elections.
Rodolfo Hernández already had a first surge in the polls back in November and December 2021, climbing to second place behind Petro, albeit in a much more divided and crowded field at the time. His campaign then faltered and lost momentum, and got more quiet. Not competing in the primaries and with the Liga only on the ballot in one department, Rodolfo Hernández came out a bit weakened from the March 13 elections. He fell to third in the polls, at around 10%. He then lost his two Argentine strategists, who had been advising him since the 1990s; both left the country alleging security concerns. He replaced them with Ángel Beccassino, a prominent Argentine strategist who had advised left-wing campaigns in Colombia including Petro in 2018 (as well as Juan Manuel Santos in 2014). In April, a pre-trial audience in the Vitalogic trash contract scandal — in which Rodolfo Hernández is indicted — was held.
After this difficult period, Rodolfo’s campaign found a second wind in late April. Coordinated through an online platform and WhatsApp groups, his online rodolfista volunteers (about 500,000 in all) came up with the idea of simultaneously organizing ‘caravans’ for Rodolfo in their towns on April 23, both in major cities and smaller provincial towns. The candidate himself also finally started campaigning across the country, after being reticent to leave Bucaramanga, holding rallies in different cities (this campaign tour was one of Beccassino’s conditions to work with him). This has allowed him to meet people (and videos of crowds warmly receiving him). Finally, in the final stretch, he started running several TV ads.
The rodolfista surge is also the result of growing name recognition. The April Invamer poll found that just half of respondents (and 57.5% of likely voters) knew him. In the last Invamer poll, his name recognition increased to 60% among all respondents, and 70% among likely voters. In addition, the people who got to know him also really liked him: his favourability increased from 30% to 42.6% between April and May (among all respondents) while his unfavorable number actually fell very slightly (11% to 9.6%). On the other hand, improved name recognition was not as helpful for Fico after the primaries: his name recognition increased from 42% in March before the primaries to 79% in April and 82% in May, but both his favourability and unfavourability increased in tandem (from 23/14 favourable/unfavourable in March to 39/29 fav/unfav in May).
Moreover, the final polls show that Rodolfo Hernández is now in a sweet spot that any candidate would love to be in: he still has room to grow (in name recognition) and he has the most momentum in the final week.
In Colombian elections, the perception of momentum going into the home stretch is quite important. In 2018, for example, Sergio Fajardo had the most momentum in the final week(s) and he ended up overperforming all his final (public polls): pegged at 16–18%, he won 23.8%. Therefore, Rodolfo Hernández goes into the final days with the most momentum just as his main rival (for now), Fico, has clearly stagnated and is now in a fight to retain second place.
With Petro having consolidated the left behind him, Rodolfo Hernández is fighting for the centre, right and politically unaffiliated/apathetic. According to the Invamer poll’s crosstabs, Rodolfo Hernández gets 22% among those identifying as centrist (vs. 37% for Petro and 28% for Fico), 23% among right-wingers (vs. 44.5% for Fico) and 32% among those not declaring any ideological affinity (vs. 33% for Petro). He also appears to be doing better with women, the poor and in rural areas and smaller municipalities.
To target the centre, he is presenting himself as the tercería, or third way option, between Fico and Petro — what Fajardo was in 2018 — and aiming to win over undecideds or wavering voters who are looking for a third candidate different from Fico (right-wing and identified as the government’s continuity candidate) and Petro. He presents himself as the only candidate who can unite the country.
He is also doubling down on his populist appeal to politically apathetic voters (as well as potential voters from all political horizons) with his classic anti-corruption rhetoric and a focus on bread and butter issues. He’s captured the public’s attention by unveiling a series of populist anti-corruption decrees he’d adopt on his first day in office, including abolishing the presidential advisory offices, defining austerity as public policy, indefinitely suspending the use of official vehicles by congressmen, closing a number of unneccessary consulates and embassies, converting the presidential palace (Casa de Nariño) into a Fernando Botero museum and suspending the use of planes and vehicles by the president and cabinet ministers.
Others have noticed his momentum. On May 20, Ingrid Betancourt finally ended her futile presidential campaign and endorsed Rodolfo Hernández. She said that he was the only candidate able to defeat “the system” and called him a centrist candidate, the only one who can make the runoff and defeat both Petro and Fico. Betancourt was barely polling 1% and is not very popular, so she doesn’t bring much to him. In a way, however, Betancourt kind of pioneered, in the 1990s, the bombastic anti-corruption rhetoric (and theatrics) that is now fueling Rodolfo’s surge…
Green senator-elect ‘Jota Pe’ Hernández, the viral anti-corruption YouTuber/influencer who took the political world by surprise by winning 189,000 votes ‘out of nowhere’, announced his support for Rodolfo (a santandereano like him) on May 23. Jota Pe Hernández’s populist anti-corruption and anti-establishment YouTube videos are very similar in tone and content to Rodolfo’s brand (it is said that Rodolfo Hernández voted for him for Senate).
Fico and Petro, on the other hand, both seem to be getting worried. Fico, who faces the most immediate threat, is fighting for the right-wing vote that Rodolfo is eating away from him, says that Rodolfo Hernández isn’t credible when speaking about corruption because he has a corruption scandal (whereas Fico has clean hands). Petro, who now realizes that his biggest threat in the runoff is Rodolfo Hernández, has called him a “corrupt millionaire” and uribista.
The prison visits and Petro’s social pardon
The biggest threat to Petro’s momentum came in April, around Easter, when his little-known brother Juan Fernando paid a visit to politicians incarcerated at the La Picota prison.
On April 8, Petro’s brother visited the prison for around six hours and talked to eight convicted politicians. Juan Fernando Petro talked to politicians including former mayor of Bucaramanga and Polo senator Iván Moreno (the brother of former Bogotá mayor Samuel Moreno), sentenced in 2014 to 14 years in jail for his role in the ‘carrusel de la contratación’ scandal during his brother’s mayoral administration.
He also met with other former politicians including former senator Álvaro ‘el Gordo’ García Romero, sentenced to 40 years as the mastermind of the Macayepo massacre (paramilitary massacre in 2000 which killed 15 peasants), former senator Martín Morales (convicted of parapolítica, attempted murder and drug trafficking), as well as local politicians like Germán Chaparro, former mayor of Villavicencio (Meta) in jail for the murder of his predecessor, and former governors in jail for corruption like former San Andrés governor Ronald Housni.
According to chats obtained by Noticias Caracol, they talked about a judicial reform which would include reduced sentences (by 20 to 30%) and better conditions for prisoners in exchange for votes for Petro. Others have suggested that Petro’s brother might have been looking for money instead of votes.
However, as La Silla Vacía explained, the prisoners in question have very few votes to bring to the campaign. While some of them like Iván Moreno or Álvaro García Romero used to be leaders of strong political machines, their structures have fallen apart or been greatly weakened since their downfall. The others are little-known former local politicians from small departments (Amazonas, Guainía, Casanare…) who either have no political machines of their own or only weak ones. None of them are the kind of people you’d meet if you were looking to get a significant amount of votes for a campaign.
The embarrassing prison visit took Petro’s campaign by surprise and its response was messy and botched. At first, Gustavo Petro told La W Radio that his brother went to La Picota to meet with Iván Moreno and that Moreno had suggested that they help build the ‘perdón social’ (‘social pardon’). Petro did point out that he was the one who sent Moreno to jail — Petro was a vocal opponent of Samuel and Iván Moreno and denounced the carrusel de la contratación scandal while others in the Polo remained silent. Cielo Rusinque, a lawyer close to the Petro campaign, even said that the campaign was invited to meet with Moreno in prison.
The ‘social pardon’ or ‘social forgiveness’— forgiveness for past crimes in exchange for a commitment for truth and reconciliation— is a concept which Petro has talked about throughout his political career. Petro, who himself benefited from the general amnesty for demobilized members of the M-19 guerrilla in 1989, has talked about reconciliation and forgiveness for all criminal actors in recent Colombian history — parapolíticos, guerrillas, ex-paramilitaries and even narcos. In 2021, he even agreed with Álvaro Uribe’s self-contradictory proposal for a general amnesty for all actors in the armed conflict, tweeting that “social and historical forgiveness is an almost unrepeatable but fundamental moment in the peace of societies”.
Petro’s explanations kept changing. Upon realizing how bad it looked to say that a corrupt politician in prison reached out to them to help construct the ‘social pardon’, Petro said that his brother doesn’t work for his campaign and was not sent or authorized by his campaign. His brother confirmed this, saying that he visited La Picota as a part of his work for a NGO which promotes reconciliation. Their version suggests that Petro didn’t know about his brother’s visit and didn’t approve of it, and that Juan Fernando fell into a trap set by Petro’s political rivals. However, not everyone was convinced by their version of events or the claim that Petro didn’t know about his brother’s visit ahead of time.
The petrista belief that this story was all a trap was reinforced by an audio recording allegedly from convicted drug lord Marquitos Figueroa in which he asks to vote for Petro for a ‘true judicial reform’ and a ‘social pardon’. Green senator Angélica Lozano, who supports Fajardo, said that the Marquitos Figueroa audio was proof of a smear campaign against Petro. Celebrity left-wing lawyer Miguel Ángel Del Río, the victims’ lawyer who recently got a 36 year sentence against Marquitos Figueroa, said he wasn’t surprised that he wasn’t surprised that he was now trying to hurt Petro’s campaign.
On April 14, Petro’s campaign put out a video on his Twitter in which he said that his campaign does not support a judicial reform with reduced sentences, amnesties or pardons and rejected the idea of confusing the idea of social reconciliation with benefits for corrupt politicians. Many felt that the video, with awkward cuts, camera angles and Petro seldom looking directly into the camera, showed how nervous and uncomfortable Petro was.
Petro was right to be nervous. A CNC poll for CM& news found that his ‘social pardon’ idea is unpopular: 48% said that the idea worsened their opinion of him while only 21% said it improved their opinion. However, only 19% said that the controversy changed their voting intention.
In an interview with Cambio, Petro admitted to mistakes in his handling of the scandal and that it allowed his opponents to take advantage of an an unexpected situation.
His opponents tried to jump on what they called the ‘Pact of La Picota’. Fico Gutiérrez held a press conference outside La Picota to criticize Petro, saying that the “other campaign” came there to seek votes in exchange for reduced sentences or the so-called ‘social pardon’ and calling it one of the worst scandals in Colombian history. Fico emphasized his proposals to increase sentences for corruption-related crimes to 40 years imprisonment, build more jails and liquidate the INPEC (the prisons and corrections agency).
However, Fico isn’t really in a position to be giving lessons on hanging out with corrupt politicians. His campaign has openly welcomed the support of political clans with members convicted of corruption or parapolítica, like the Gnecco clan in Cesar, the powerful Blel clan in Bolívar and of course Alex Char and his machines.
César Gaviria with Fico Gutiérrez
For months, one of the big questions was who Liberal Party leader and former president (1990–1994) César Gaviria would end up endorsing.
On April 27, César Gaviria endorsed Fico Gutiérrez. The day before, a meeting of the incoming Liberal congressional caucus authorized Gaviria to meet with Fico and, if he accepted certain points presented by the party, endorse him. This is a symbolic agreement which does not formally bind the party to Fico — the party did not formally endorse a candidate in the legal sense of the term, and only a Liberal convention is allowed to elect a candidate — but it was a victory for Fico. And behind Gaviria, the majority of the Liberal caucus supports Fico.
As I’ve mentioned in past posts (see here and here), Gaviria and the Liberal Party’s support had been the subject of much speculation over the past few months. As the Liberal Party led by César Gaviria adopted a ‘wait and see’ strategy and focused on the congressional elections (in which they did quite well), a lot of presidential campaigns eagerly sought out his endorsement. Gustavo Petro spent months wooing César Gaviria and the Liberals, and he finally managed to have a meeting with Gaviria in late February. Things seemed to be going quite well for him, but relations between the Petro campaign and Gaviria abruptly unravelled after Petro chose Francia Márquez as his running mate.
After Francia Márquez went after César Gaviria, saying that he represented neoliberalism and ‘more of the same’, Gaviria angrily responded by cutting off any further talks with the Pacto. He really didn’t appreciate her remarks, calling them “rude, false and malicious” and an “unacceptable offence”. The more traditional and moderate half of Petro’s campaign, led by senator Roy Barreras (ex-Partido de la U), who had been so eager to form a ‘progressive-liberal’ governing coalition with the Liberals, tried to patch things up with Gaviria, but clearly there was no getting back together.
In addition, while Petro has the support of a fair number of Liberal congressmen (although a lot of them didn’t seek reelection and will not be returning to Congress), most of them (especially in the incoming caucus) aren’t on his side.
According to La Silla Vacía, the idea to let Gaviria meet with Fico to give him his endorsement (rather than to vote at a convention or in a poll to endorse a candidate) was apparently suggested by Liberal senator Mario Castaño, under investigation for corruption. This was done to avoid divisions within the party caucus. When the Liberal caucus met, there was no real vote but rather a question if anyone opposed granting Gaviria the power to meet with Fico — and the minority of congressmen who support Petro (or don’t support anyone, like senator-elect Alejandro Carlos Chacón) remained silent, cowed by Gaviria’s power and influence within the party.
Again, Gaviria’s support does not legally bind the party to Fico — but it’s clear that Gaviria had the support of the majority of his caucus in endorsing Fico. Afterwards, only five Liberal congressmen who will still serve in Congress after July 20 signed a letter endorsing Petro.
Gaviria’s endorsement reinforced Fico’s ‘national unity’ message — that he’s not the conservative or uribista candidate, but rather a catch-all moderate whose only ideology is “common sense” and who offers opportunities and not hatred and division. Since March, Fico has been quite successful at consistently sticking to that narrative (it was also reinforced by his vice presidential pick, Rodrigo Lara Sánchez, the former Green mayor of Neiva). While Gaviria’s endorsement likely doesn’t bring much votes, it does allow Fico to argue that he’s a centrist who can unite the country while Petro is a radical leftist who would divide the country.
The biggest benefit to Fico from this endorsement would come if Fico wins the presidency: with the Liberal Party’s support, he would have a comfortable governing majority in both houses of the incoming Congress.
Given that he had obviously wanted Gaviria’s endorsement, even over the objections of many leftists in his own coalition who deeply dislike Gaviria (identified as the one who brought neoliberalism to Colombia in the 1990s), it was a hard blow to Petro. He put on a brave face on it and returned to more traditional left-wing rhetoric, saying that Fico and Gaviria would govern with privatizations and the neoliberal agenda (but that “real liberalism isn’t like this”). Although Colombian politicians are definitely not known for their loyalty or ideological consistency, with most Liberals in the new Congress supporting Fico, this would make it even more difficult for Petro to form a stable governing coalition in Congress. He already lacks a majority in either house, even with the support of the Greens/Centro Esperanza, and would absolutely need the support of the majority of the Liberals in Congress to get a coalition together. But we’re still a long way away from that…
However, in spite of all that, it is unlikely that Gaviria and the Liberals’ endorsement will provide a real momentum boost to Fico’s campaign. César Gaviria, as an old politician and former president who has been around forever, isn’t particularly popular and doesn’t excite anyone. It will be easy for Petro and his allies to point out that Fico recreated behind him the trio of former presidents who endorsed Iván Duque in 2018: Álvaro Uribe (2002–2010), Andrés Pastrana (1998–2002) and César Gaviria (1990–1994). Not sure that the infamous image of the trio back in 2018 is the example of ‘national unity’ that Fico is looking for…
The alliance that never was: Rodolfo and Sergio
Rodolfo Hernández and Sergio Fajardo were relegated to the back of the pack after the March 13 primaries, as the race became defined as a horserace between Petro and Fico.
Both campaigns struggled in March. Badly weakened by the failure of the centrist primary, Sergio Fajardo desperately tried to stage a remontada (comeback), to no avail. He failed to gain endorsements and support from outside the Centro Esperanza coalition, he was unable to capture public attention in a campaign that has remained centered around Petro and he didn’t define himself besides saying he was not Petro and not Fico. His argument that he was the better candidate to defeat Petro in the runoff — part of his strategy to beat Fico for second place — didn’t really appeal to anyone (and polls have since shown that he does no better than Fico against Petro in the runoff).
Both candidates have an interest in avoiding a Petro/Fico runoff, and more generally the consolidation of a left/right narrative. Rodolfo Hernández has been very critical of Fico — who he says is just a thinner and hairier version of Duque — but been rather uncritical of Petro and Fajardo.
Hernández and Fajardo do have a few important things in common — both focus on fighting corruption and clientelistic politics and are wary of political parties. Otherwise, they are quite different. Rodolfo Hernández is a former businessman turned brash and impudent populist, with an upstart and atypical campaign quasi-exclusively focused on corruption and simplistic denunciations of corrupt politicians who’ve stolen everything. Sergio Fajardo is a mathematician (and he reasons like one) who is calm, measured and somewhat risk-averse (some would say wishy-washy and noncommittal) with a more thoroughly fleshed out platform and backed by a coalition with many experienced politicians from different backgrounds. Rodolfo Hernández refused to participate in any coalition or primary, considering them a waste of time and money, and has often repeated that his only coalition is with the people and that he will go all the way to the first round alone.
On March 29, Rodolfo and Fajardo sat down for coffee. Both posted the picture on their social media, and both wrote that they agreed that the fight against corruption is the main problem in Colombia. Fajardo added that they would keep talking.
For Fajardo, having coffee with another candidate was a nod to a mistake from his 2018 campaign that has haunted him. In 2018, he and then-Liberal candidate Humberto de la Calle were criticized for never sitting down for coffee (i.e. agreeing on an alliance) before the first round, and de la Calle’s 400,000 votes could have allowed Fajardo to qualify for the runoff ahead of Petro (Fajardo was 252,000 votes away from second in 2018).
About a month later, La Silla Vacía revealed that Fajardo and Hernández met to discuss the possibility and details of a possible alliance between the two of them, and the mechanism to select a single candidate out of the two. People in Fajardo’s campaign said they were looking at doing a poll. There was talk to announce something by the first week of May.
However, the results of the Invamer poll in late April (Invamer is seen by many as the best pollster) complicated things. The poll showed Rodolfo Hernández significantly ahead of Fajardo, with 14% against 6.5% for Fajardo. Quite clearly, if anyone were to drop out for the other, it would need to be Fajardo.
The poll threw the beleaguered Fajardo campaign into crisis mode, while Hernández told the media that he believed another poll was not necessary as it showed who should endorse who — and ensured that if the numbers had been the other way around, he would have dropped out and told his supporters to vote for Fajardo. Fajardo, however, began criticizing the polls, claiming — without much evidence — that they were manipulated to influence public opinion and distort the race (you know a campaign is doing badly when they start attacking the polls), and that he had an internal poll that showed them tied. His campaign insisted on a new poll.
On May 17, La Silla Vacía again revealed that Fajardo and Rodolfo had met in mid-May in another effort to unite. This time it was clear that Fajardo would drop out and endorse Hernández, in a joint effort to give Rodolfo a late momentum boost that could propel him to the runoff instead of Fico. The report claimed that Fajardo had discussed the idea with his coalition where many agreed it was the only way to avoid a Petro/Fico runoff.
However, very quickly, the Fajardo campaign seemed to deny the reports — Fajardo posted a handwritten note on Twitter in which he reiterated that his campaign would go on until the end.
There are some important legal and financial obstacles to an alliance and to Fajardo dropping out. The law says that compliance with the results of primary elections is mandatory, and although there’s nothing that bans candidates elected in a primary from dropping out of the race later, there are important consequences to doing so. The law says that, in case of non-compliance with the results, parties and/or candidates must reimburse the costs of organizing the primary to the state and they would not get access to public financing (reposición de votos, a per-vote subsidy that helps them reimburse their campaign expenses). This would have a nasty financial impact not only on Fajardo but also on the other Centro Esperanza pre-candidates who need to pay back their campaign debts.
As the campaign ends, Rodolfo Hernández no longer needs to ally with anyone and Fajardo is collapsing. The bottom is falling out from Fajardo’s campaign. Some of his erstwhile supporters are already openly abandoning him and switching sides — representatives-elect Catherine Juvinao and Duvalier Sánchez endorsed Petro, allies of Carlos Amaya in Boyacá like senator-elect Carolina Espitia have endorsed Rodolfo while Amaya already says he’d vote for Rodolfo in a runoff against Petro. Former presidential pre-candidate Alejandro Gaviria hinted that he favours Petro with his comments in a FT interview (before clarifying he’s still with Fajardo until the end), prompting Jorge Enrique Robledo to reiterate his view that Gaviria is a bad person. Right until the end, the centrist coalition cannot help but fight amongst themselves…
Military intervention in politics
Unlike a lot of countries in Latin America, Colombia is a country with a strong civilista tradition (civilian control of the military and military non-intervention in politics).
There was only one ‘real’ successful military coup in 20th century Colombian history (as opposed to autogolpes, failed coup attempts and palace coups): General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla’s coup in 1953 (forced to resign and removed from office in 1957, replaced by a junta which restored civilian rule through the National Front from 1958). Both Rojas Pinilla’s 1953 coup and his removal in 1957 enjoyed widespread support from factions in both the Liberal and Conservative parties at the time, and the 1953 coup was often called a golpe de opinión.
That doesn’t mean that there haven’t been fraught moments in civilian-military relations, or even strong rumours of military coups in the making (most prominently during Ernesto Samper’s embattled government). Nor does it imply that the Colombian military has been truly committed to democracy or anything like that. But it does mean that there’s a strong tradition that the military does not openly intervene in politics. In exchange for military neutrality (or a gentleman’s agreement to keep disagreements bottled up), governments have invariably offered unwavering support to the military as an institution, even in times of crises (like during the protests or the botched military operations in Caquetá in 2019 and Putumayo in 2022), hailing the “heroes of the patria”.
It was therefore a big thing when General Eduardo Enrique Zapateiro, the commander of the Colombian Army, used Twitter to attack Gustavo Petro for comments he had made days earlier.
After six soldiers were killed and another five wounded in an ambush by the Clan del Golfo in Antioquia, on April 20 Petro tweeted “while the soldiers are killed by the Clan del Golfo, some generals are on the payroll of Clan. The leadership is corrupted when the politiqueros of drug trafficking are the ones who end up rising to the ranks of general.”
On April 22, General Zapateiro posted a long Twitter thread in which he attacks Petro (without ever naming him explicitly). He warned him not to use his office as senator (parliamentary immunity) to play cheap politics with the deaths of soldiers, and to formally report the crimes he mentioned to the proper authorities. In another tweet, Zapateiro said that he never saw any general receiving illegal money on television, whereas Colombians had seen Petro receiving money in bags — a reference to a scandal from 2018 (revealed by uribistas) in which parts of an old video (from 2005) showed Petro receiving cash and putting it in a bag, fueling speculation that he had received dirty money. However, in 2021, the Supreme Court closed the case because of statute of limitations although it also found that regardless there was no proof incriminating Petro.
In an interview with Semana, Zapateiro kept fueling the controversy, telling the magazine that “the day I leave this beloved institution, I will leave many Zapateiros… Therefore I will never leave, because they will continue the legacy… that is what I defended with honour”.
Zapateiro’s political comments generated a lot of reactions. Respected constitutional expert and researcher Rodrigo Uprimny said that Zapateiro’s comments violated articles 127 and 219 of the Constitution (banning public servants from intervening in electoral politics, and establishing that the armed forces are not deliberative, respectively). Sergio Fajardo defended Petro, calling Zapateiro’s comments unacceptable as they politicized the armed forces and normalized the electoral involvement of government officials. Fico, on the other hand, criticized the double standards of some in politics who were more outraged by some ‘tweets by a military man’ than the deaths of soldiers and police officers in the past week.
The right largely defended Zapateiro, reiterating their support for the military as an institution and criticizing Petro for his callous comments and his attacks on the honour and respectability of the military. President Iván Duque, who by law can’t comment on the campaign but in practice can’t help himself from incessantly criticizing Petro, criticized those who campaign by attacking the military. Reserve officers — who can participate in politics and are very conservative — closed ranks in defence of Zapateiro.
Zapateiro was appointed commander of the army by Duque in 2019. Like other members of the joint staff of the Colombian military appointed by Duque, he’s a conservative with a traditional internal conflict/internal enemy mentality.
He’s also no stranger to controversy. In 2020, he expressed sorrow for the death of ‘Popeye’, Pablo Escobar’s former hitman. In 2021, reacting to the JEP’s report on the 6,400 false positives, he said that the military wouldn’t let itself be defeated by “poisonous and wicked vipers” (he unconvincingly claimed he was referring to illegal armed groups, not the JEP). He has also been criticized for the use of force during the 2021 protests and for a March 2022 military operation in Putumayo in which innocent civilians at a community bazaar were killed (while the military falsely claimed that 11 guerrilleros had been killed). In May 2022, Cambio and Noticias Uno revealed that Zapateiro is under investigation for embezzlement.
Zapateiro’s unusual breach of military neutrality and non-intervention in politics shows just how explosive and unprecedented this election — and the real possibility of a left-wing victory for the first time ever — is for Colombia.
The suspension of Daniel Quintero
On May 10, Inspector General (Procuradora General) Margarita Cabello suspended (for three months) the mayor of Medellín, Daniel Quintero, from office. He is accused of ‘participation in politics’.
He was suspended for a five second Twitter video he had posted less than 24 hours before. The video shows him shifting gears in his car while saying ‘el cambio en primera’ (change in first). El cambio en primera is a slogan used by Petro supporters on social media hoping for a first round victory — Quintero using it was yet another very thinly-veiled hint that he supports Petro. But officeholders are forbidden by law from openly supporting any candidate for elected office or otherwise ‘participating in politics’.
Quintero’s suspension from office was extremely controversial. Daniel Quintero considered his suspension a “coup d’état” and claimed that democracy was at risk, alleging that “they” (Álvaro Uribe and Cabello) wanted to remove him from office to intervene in the presidential elections. Gustavo Petro also considered Quintero’s suspension to be a coup.
He called on his supporters to peacefully protest the decision the next day in front of La Alpujarra, the administrative complex in downtown Medellín. He followed, to a T, the Petro playbook from 2013, when then-mayor Petro was removed from office by conservative Inspector General Alejandro Ordóñez. At the time, Petro called on his supporters to protest the controversial decision in front of the Bogotá city hall (Palacio Liévano on Bogotá’s central Plaza de Bolívar), as he revved up the crowd from the balcony of his office. Quintero did exactly the same thing. In his speech to the crowd at La Alpujarra and in media comments, Quintero often refers to Petro’s dismissal in 2013 by a ‘fascist procurador’ (the ultra-conservative Ordóñez).
The decision is controversial in good part because it reveals Margarita Cabello’s political biases. While Quintero was suspended in record time for a tweet, Cabello hasn’t suspended General Zapateiro from office for his comments and never even issued a warning to President Iván Duque for his incessant meddling in the campaign, against Petro (she cannot sanction him but could issue a warning). Especially when Duque continues to tweet stuff like this…
To be sure, Cabello did attempt to appear neutral or unbiased in her decisions: at the same time as she suspended Quintero, she also sanctioned the Conservative mayor of Ibagué, Andrés Hurtado, who openly said that he supported Fico in the primaries on March 13. About a week later, Cabello also suspended the mayors of San Juan Nepomuceno (Bolívar) and Timaná (Huila) for having supported Fico at an event organized by the National Federation of Departments in April (she also announced disciplinary investigations against five other mayors in Bolívar for their behaviour at the same event). The mayor of San Juan Nepomuceno is accused of having offered 40,000 votes to Fico at this event.
Margarita Cabello is not a neutral observer. Cabello, Inspector General since January 2021, was elected Inspector General right after having served as Duque’s Minister of Justice (from June 2019 to August 2020). She had previously served as president of the Supreme Court, magistrate in the civil chamber of the Supreme Court, delegate inspector for disciplinary surveillance (under Ordóñez) and family judge. The Inspector General is elected by the Senate from a list of three candidates (terna) nominated by the President, the Supreme Court and the Council of State respectively. Cabello was nominated by Duque and was easily elected with the support of the governing right-wing coalition. Cabello is not only close to uribismo (then-President Uribe included her as one of his three nominees for attorney general in 2009) but also to the political clans in her native Barranquilla, like the Char, Name and Gerlein families.
The Procuraduría’s decision openly defies the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In 2020, in the Petro case, the IACHR ruled that the Procuraduría cannot remove elected officials from office, as that violates article 23 of the American Convention on Human Rights, and that they may only be dismissed from office following a criminal conviction by a judge. Cabello, with the full support of Duque and Congress, responded with the adoption of a law in 2021 which gives the Procuraduría jurisdictional authority (by creating an appeals procedure, with a new disciplinary trials chamber within the Procuraduría). In December 2021, the IACHR found that the 2021 law still does not comply with its 2020 ruling, because it still allows for a body other than a judge to remove an elected official from office.
Quintero is himself a controversial mayor. Just a few weeks before his suspension, he managed to have a strong recall petition against him quashed by the CNE. As a left-leaning mayor (he already voted Petro in the 2018 runoff) in a right-wing city, he easily made a lot of enemies. He has challenged the local governance model followed by all previous mayors since 2003 (Fajardo, Alonso Salazar, Aníbal Gaviria, Fico), based on an alliance between the public sector and Antioquia’s strong private sector. He has been a strong critic of the Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño (GEA), the very strong and influential antioqueño keiretsu, notably for their role in the Hidroituango fiasco. He has a lot of critics, and not only the right — for example, some point out the hypocrisy and contradictions in his presentation as an ‘independent alternative’ politician given his political history, proximity to a lot of political clans (including former governor Luis Pérez) and autocratic style of governance.
President Iván Duque appointed Juan Camilo Restrepo, his High Commissioner for Peace and former Conservative gubernatorial candidate in Antioquia in 2019, as the caretaker mayor of Medellín. The appointment of a pro-government caretaker mayor in a city where uribismo lost the last mayoral election is obviously controversial, and can easily feed into Quintero’s ‘anti-democratic coup’ discourse. In an interview with El País, Quintero said that with Restrepo’s appointment Duque had “completed the coup d’état against democracy in Medellín” and called Restrepo an ally of the GEA.
Quintero’s suspension may provide a significant boost to Petro’s campaign. In Colombia, the discourse of political persecution and victimhood almost always helps to unite and reinvigorate a politician’s base. The heavy media coverage of his case will inevitably make him a national figure, and provide a nice boost to his own future ambitions (2027…). In the immediate future, for the Petro campaign he is now the symbol of the unpopular Duque administration’s desperation to retain power and interfere in the elections. At his rally at La Alpujarra, Quintero was joined by his wife and by the leading figures of the Pacto Histórico: senator-elect María José Pizarro, Bogotá representative David Racero and most of the incoming paisa members of the Pacto Histórico caucus (Quintero loyalists like Álex Flórez but also Susana Boreal and Isabel Zuleta).
Now, in the final stretch of the campaign, the Petro campaign in Antioquia and Quintero’s inner circle (and his movement, Independientes) have merged with Quintero allies taking on key roles in the Petro campaign. Quintero’s right-hand man and former secretary of government, Esteban Restrepo, who resigned to formally campaign for Petro, is now a member of the top echelon of the campaign. Quintero is still barred from participating in politics while suspended but he has made his sympathies even more obvious, basically endorsing him without mentioning his name.
The Clan del Golfo’s paro armado
On May 4, ‘Otoniel’, the leader of the Clan del Golfo, was extradited to the United States where he faces drug trafficking charges. Just as President Iván Duque triumphantly announced the extradition of the criminal leader he compared to Pablo Escobar, the Clan del Golfo responded with a terrifying show of force — a four-day paro armado (armed strike).
From May 5 to 9, the Clan del Golfo declared an armed strike — banning shops and businesses from opening and people from moving around using any kind of transportation, confining local populations to their homes. Armed men blocked over 20 roads, burned cars, buses and trucks, intimidated local residents, closed community radio stations, shut down public and inter-municipal transportation, forced local businesses to close and threateningly painted the letters AGC on walls.
According to the JEP, 309 acts of violence affected the civilian population in 11 departments and 178 municipalities — the Caribbean region, Chocó, the Bajo Cauca and Urabá regions of Antioquia and the Magdalena Medio region of Santander. The JEP reported the deaths of 24 civilians and 2 soldiers.
This armed strike was not limited to rural areas. Cities like Montería (Córdoba), Sincelejo (Sucre) and Apartadó (Antioquia) were entirely paralyzed, with businesses, schools shut down, and transportation halted. Even the Independiente Medellín football team was afraid to go play a top football league match against the local team in Montería, and did not show up. This article in La Silla Vacía collected testimony from residents in regions affected, describing the horrific climate of terror and fear. Many residents voiced their frustration and deep distrust in the military and police in the face of their impotence to maintain control and order.
The Clan del Golfo, also known as the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia (AGC), Los Urabeños or Clan Úsuga, are the largest criminal organization and neo-paramilitary group in Colombia. According to a recent report by the Fundación Paz y Reconciliación (Pares), the Clan del Golfo has over 3,200 men (about 1,400 in arms) and is active is over 240 municipalities, primarily in northern Colombia, the Pacific coast and the Venezuelan border.
The Clan del Golfo, formed around 2006–2008, mostly finds its roots in the demobilization of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) in the early 2000s. They are one of the main drug trafficking groups in Colombia, with ties to the Mexican drug cartels, but they have a diversified portfolio of illegal economies (extortion, illegal mining, human trafficking). One of their most distinctive features is their use of ‘franchises’ or subcontractors, recruiting smaller local gangs who use the name to grow their income and influence in exchange for a cut of the criminal income to the core structure.
Dairo Antonio Úsuga, alias ‘Otoniel’, had been the leader of the group since his brother’s death in 2012. He had been one of the most wanted men in Colombia for several years and the top target of Operation Agamemnon, a large-scale military operation against the group launched in 2015 and renewed in 2018. In 2017, Otoniel offered to surrender in a video message, but negotiations did not result in his surrender. Operation Agamemnon 2 increased pressure on Otoniel and gradually debilitated his inner circle (his brother, sister and cousin were all arrested and extradited). Otoniel was captured in Urabá in October 2021. He later claimed that he turned himself in, something that the government emphatically denied.
Otoniel’s extradition was controversial. While Duque sought to have him extradited to the United States as quickly as possible, Otoniel asked to be accepted by the transitional justice system (JEP), claiming that he could offer valuable information about the conflict. In March, however, the JEP rejected him, concluding that he was not a ‘civilian third party’ and therefore fell outside their jurisdiction.
In early April, the Supreme Court authorized his extradition, allowing Duque to proudly sign his extradition order (complete with a bizarre staged photo-op). However, the Council of State temporarily suspended his extradition on April 29 upon accepting a tutela (injunction) from a group of victims which wanted to stop his extradition until he revealed the truth about his civilian and military allies. A few days later, on May 2, however, they rejected the tutela and lifted the suspension and allowed his extradition to go ahead.
While he was detained in Colombia, Otoniel testified before the Truth Commission and the JEP. His testimony before the Truth Commission in February was abruptly interrupted by the police, which suspected him of planning to escape, and the digital recordings with his confessions were mysteriously stolen.
As part of his testimony, Otoniel gave a list of 64 names that he accused of collaborating with the Clan del Golfo or the paramilitaries. This list, publicly revealed by the JEP in early May, includes one incumbent senator (Miguel Ángel Pinto), former cabinet ministers, several former governors (including Luis Pérez), former congressmen, former security chiefs, local politicians and universities (like Duque’s alma mater, the Sergio Arboleda University). He had also provided details about the support the Clan del Golfo and the paramilitaries received from parts of the military, mentioning the names of four prominent former generals.
His quick extradition (even if Duque pledges that he will need to come back to Colombia to pay for his crimes afterwards) just as he was promising to reveal the names of his civilian and military accomplices, really looks as if the political elites were in a real rush to get rid of him before he talked too much, fearing a repeat of the scandalous parapolítica revelations.
This armed strike was the Clan del Golfo’s biggest armed strike in six years and it displayed its power to terrorize and paralyze entire departments; mocking the government’s supposed territorial control even in non-peripheral regions.
The armed strike showed just how wrong Duque was when he proclaimed that Otoniel’s captured marked the end of the Clan del Golfo (Duque is very bad at predicting the future in general though). Although some analysts speculated that with his capture there would be a power vacuum and that they could fracture, most agreed that the idea that Otoniel’s capture marked the end of the group was a rushed conclusion and far from reality. As this analysis from the Fundación Ideas para la Paz (FIP) explained, while the fall of Otoniel will naturally have an impact on the group and may lead to internal fragmentation, the Clan del Golfo will remain a major actor in the conflict. Its horizontal structure, its largely autonomous substructures, its nature as a rent-seeking organization, its strong base in certain regions (like Urabá, southern Córdoba, Bajo Cauca, northern Chocó) are factors which allow for their continued survival and strength.
Moreover, Otoniel had been on the run, in hiding, and increasingly isolated from the rest of the criminal organization. His control over the organization may have already been weakened by the time he was captured.
Yet, despite all of this, the government failed to anticipate the armed strike and was then slow to intervene. The armed strike showed the catastrophic failure of the government’s security policies. Iván Duque was criticized for being abroad, attending the Costa Rican president’s inauguration, while cities like Montería were shut down by criminals. He only referred to the situation, from Bogotá, on the third day of the strike. He largely left matters in the hands of Diego Molano, the defence minister. Molano tried to downplay the seriousness of the situation — interpreting it as an internal struggle between Otoniel’s lieutenants, or contending that the strike was caused more by fear than by the Clan’s actual strength.
Even though the armed strike showed the shortcomings of the government’s ‘beheading policy’ (targeting the senior leaderships of criminal organizations), Duque responded with more of the same: announcing the creation of a search bloc and higher financial rewards for the heads of ‘Chiquito Malo’ and ‘Siopas’, assumed to be the top two leaders of the group today. The ‘beheading strategy’ worked back in its day with the FARC, which had a much more hierarchical, vertical structure, but has not worked with the FARC dissidents or the Clan del Golfo.
Other news
- On April 27, a judge denied the Fiscalía’s request to close the witness tampering case against former president Álvaro Uribe. Over 12 hours, the judge ripped apart the arguments of prosecutor Gabriel Jaimes, who had requested the formal closure of the criminal case against Álvaro Uribe, accused of witness tampering. After resigning his seat in the Senate in 2020, after the Supreme Court had ordered his house arrest, Uribe’s case was transferred to the Fiscalía, which is run by Francisco Barbosa, Duque’s old classmate from university. Uribe was released, but his case continued where it had been left off (at the stage where prosecutors decide if they formally indicted him or closed the case). In March 2021, the Fiscalía announced that they would request the case to be closed, arguing that the evidence did not allow them to conclude that Uribe was responsible of any crime and that if there were crimes there was no evidence that Uribe had committed them. However, the judge disagreed (and agreed with the Supreme Court’s original conclusions), saying that there were indications that Uribe had committed crimes, and that it would have to be resolved in court. The judge’s decision is a blow to Uribe, who must now continue to defend himself for years to come, as well as another blow to the credibility of Barbosa’s Fiscalía. Given that the judge’s decision was not appealed, the next step is for the Fiscalía — with a new prosecutor — to decide whether or not it will formally indict Uribe of a crime or if they will again ask for the case to be closed, but with new arguments (which may be very difficult).
- On May 11, Luis Pérez dropped out of the presidential race. His name remains on the ballot. He complained that the campaign had become a game of ping pong between the extremes, with no room for reasonable debate of ideas. The truth is that Pérez never polled more than 1% and even with his ‘big ideas’ — like putting a marijuana leaf on the flag of Colombia or reopening Gorgona Island as a prison for corrupt politicians — he never stood out. He might also want to lie low given that he was mentioned on Otoniel’s list of 64 names. Upon dropping out, he didn’t endorse anyone (despite flirting with the Pacto last November) and criticized the other candidates. His running mate has since endorsed Fico.
- As previously mentioned, Ingrid Betancourt also dropped out, to endorse Rodolfo Hernández, on May 20. She also never really polled more than 1% and her old campaign strategy of getting attention through publicity stunts didn’t work out this time. Perhaps the strangest moment of her campaign is when she seemed to be kind of open to an alliance with… uribismo, part of her united front against maquinarias! In any case, her failed candidacy certainly helped in further destroying the centre, which was probably the point of her candidacy all along…
- This leaves only John Milton Rodríguez and Enrique Gómez Martínez as the two ‘minor candidates’ going until the very end. Gómez has kind of stood out with his more extreme far-right ideas: refusing any negotiations with the ELN, lowering the minimum wage…
- On May 25, Pacto Histórico senator-elect Piedad Córdoba was temporarily detained by immigration authorities at the airport in Tegucigalpa (Honduras) for carrying an undeclared $68,000 with her. She was later released, with Honduran authorities saying she was free to leave the country. She claimed that the money was for a Colombian businessman living in Honduras. This is not Piedad Córdoba’s first scandal of the campaign (see here) and with her many scandals, she has become a real problem and embarrassment to the Pacto and she has been sidelined from the campaign.
- Going into the election, the serious doubts over the credibility of the Registraduría and the deep (widespread) distrust of the embattled n national registrar, Alexander Vega, have not been resolved. Although there have been some procedural changes that will hopefully avoid a repeat of the March 13 elections fiasco, there will have been no external audit of the Registraduría’s software. Politicians on all sides have continued to add fuel to the fire, calling into question the transparency of the elections. Gustavo Petro, without any evidence, denounced an alleged plot to suspend the elections. Former Conservative president Andrés Pastrana, the main source of conspiracy theories about election fraud on the right, has continued talking about his conspiracy theory about the Spanish company Indra’s ‘ties’ to Petro and the left. Far-right uribista senator María Fernanda Cabal says that if Petro wins it will be because of fraud.
