Making sense of the 2022 Colombian elections

The 2022 Colombian congressional and presidential elections are coming up quite soon. Congressional elections and three presidential primaries will be held on March 13, and the first round of the presidential election will be held on May 29 (with a runoff 3 weeks later, on June 19).

To understand the national institutions and the electoral system, I encourage you to read my previous post about Colombia’s institutions and electoral system.

These elections will be extremely important, and there is a good chance that they could be a defining moment in Colombian politics. As the country faces a resurgence of violence and deals with the terrible effects of the pandemic, it’s a tumultuous and dynamic time in Colombian politics: new issues are emerging, old leaderships are being challenged or falling and old political norms are shattered. It is hard to predict what will happen or which direction the country will take. Colombian politics are always complicated, with a heavy dose of García Márquez’s magical realism, and it’s no different this year. As a result, it is very complicated to fully grasp what’s happening and who are the major players. I’ve tried my best below to incompletely make sense of it all by summarizing the basic context and the main players.

Congressional elections

On March 13, voters will elect 283 members of Congress — in the Senate (108 seats, 102 elected) and the House of Representatives (187 seats, 181 elected).

The Senate will draw the most attention as 100 of its seats are elected in a single national constituency and is traditionally the most prestigious of the two houses (even though their actual powers don’t differ much).

Most members of the House of Representatives (161 seats) are elected in 33 multi-member territorial constituencies corresponding to the departments and Bogotá. For the first time in 2022, an additional 16 members will be elected in single-member special transitional constituencies for peace (Citrep), in regions which were most affected by the armed conflict. These seats, which will exist until 2030, are reserved for victims of the conflict (for which parties cannot run, officially) and, somewhat controversially, only voters in the rural areas of the municipalities included in the Citrep are eligible to vote.

In both houses, there are additional elected seats representing special ethnic minority constituencies (1 indigenous in the Senate, 2 Afro and 1 indigenous in the House) and expatriates (1 seat in the House). These seats draw very little attention (and usually particularly low turnout). There are twelve ex officio members in both houses: five ex-FARC members in both houses (this will be their final term), and seats granted to the runner-up presidential and vice presidential candidates (in the Senate and the House, respectively).

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 Colombian Congress has a very bad reputation and is highly unpopular (75–80% have an unfavourable opinion of it, a number consistent since 2016). The popular 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.

Nevertheless, Congress is a key institution with important powers, and any president needs a majority in Congress to pass his/her political agenda. Although in Colombia, as in other Latin American countries, the legislative is often seen as subordinated to the more powerful executive, this is an overly simplistic view of things: relations between the legislative and executive are dynamic, and the executive cannot assume that it will be able to dominate the legislative.

The relationship is complicated and fluctuates based on many factors. Some congressmen support the government out of genuine ideological/political agreement, but in other cases the relationship is transactional: congressmen support the government in exchange for bureaucratic appointments (cuotas) in public institutions or government contracts/public works in their regions (pork-barrel spending, which is known as mermelada).

Congressional elections are often seen as being dominated by the voto de maquinarias, or the machine vote, 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.

The machine vote is usually contrasted with the voto de opinión, generally understood as the expression of an individual’s judgement of candidates and/or their ideological orientations. There’s been some interesting academic debates about the meaning of these words, and it is important not to exaggerate the difference between the ‘machine vote’ and the ‘opinion vote’ or assume that it is a clean dichotomy (or, for that matter, a bad vs. good thing).

There are 16 lists on the ballot for the Senate’s national constituency — 8 of them are closed lists, 8 of them are open lists. It is extremely unlikely that any one list will win an absolute majority of seats in either house. Indeed, the party system is fragmented and atomized. In 2018, the largest party in the Senate won only 16.4% of the vote and 18 out of 100 seats. The largest party in the House won 35 seats.

Political parties

Most political parties in Colombia are weak, fractious and divided and do a poor job at aggregating interests. Many of them are coalitions or confederations of local and regional clientelist networks, political clans (with their machines) or other political groups held together by the rigid legal regulations on political parties, including a ban on floor crossing.

There are currently 21 legally recognized political parties in Colombia. It would be too long and, frankly, pointless, to talk about each of them individually. Instead, I’ve grouped them into arbitrary categories.

The traditional parties are the old Liberal and Conservative parties, founded in the nineteenth century and which have survived far longer than in most Latin American countries. They have little left in the way of ideology and have been confederations of regional and local clientelistic machines and their bosses since the 1970s. The Conservatives, since 2018, have treaded back to the right and been somewhat more ideologically coherent than they had been in the past.

The neo-traditional or transitional parties include the Partido de la U and Cambio Radical (CR). They were founded between the late 1990s and mid-2000s, with the final breakdown of the old two-party system, often by dissidents of the traditional parties, but they too are predominantly federations of regional and local clientelistic machines and their bosses with varying degrees of internal discipline and coherence. CR was more disciplined and coherent when it was held together by former Vice President Germán Vargas Lleras, but has become more divided since his catastrophic failure in the 2018 presidential election. Like the traditional parties, these parties are very venal, unscrupulous parties with few qualms about endorsing objectively repulsive individuals and people with criminal records.

Uribismo — followers of former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez (2002–10) — is a sui generis category, because of Uribe’s sheer influence over Colombian politics since 2002. But uribismo only became a single political party, the Centro Democrático (CD), once it was in opposition (after 2011–2012 and the Uribe-Santos divorce). Uribismo is a personalistic, ‘caudillistic’ movement built around Uribe and his ideas, which meant that it was one of the most disciplined, cohesive and ideologically (semi-)coherent parties in Colombia. Uribismo claims to be ‘centrist’ but is clearly right-wing/far-right, both economically and socially, with Uribe’s main legacy being ‘democratic security’ (a hard-line, hawkish, ‘anti-terrorist’ security policy). The current uribista administration of President Iván Duque, Uribe’s anointed candidate in 2018, is unpopular and has divided and weakened the party, while Uribe himself is more unpopular than he has ever been due to a range of factors including his ongoing trial for witness tampering (for which he was briefly put under house arrest in 2020).

The alternative parties includes the left and more centrist parties. The ‘alternative’ refers to their largely anti-clientelistic, anti-corruption and sometimes anti-establishment rhetoric. This includes parties of the left like Gustavo Petro’s Colombia Humana, the older Polo Democrático, the Unión Patriótica (UP), and Movimiento Alternativo Indígena y Social (MAIS). The Green Alliance (Alianza Verde) has often lacked a common direction, made up of conflicting groups, and is split between a more left-leaning faction and a more centrist/centre-left faction. It professes to be an anti-corruption, progressive and reformist party, although it doesn’t always practice what it preaches. Other centre-left/centrist alternative parties include Nuevo Liberalismo, Green Oxygen (Verde Oxígeno) and Dignidad.

The Christian evangelical/Christian right parties are a resurgent category which now includes the MIRA and Colombia Justa Libres. A first generation of Christian (meaning evangelical/Pentecostal) parties, except MIRA, disappeared around 2003 and participated through other parties. MIRA is a testimonial party and the political arm of the Church of God Ministry of Jesus Christ International. Colombia Justa Libres is a new party, formed in 2017, by several evangelical churches and leaders.

Presidential primaries and election

The President is elected in a two round ballot and re-election is banned. The presidential field was more crowded than ever this year — some 70 or so candidates announced their candidacies, from serious contenders to complete nobodies — and so it was (still is!) quite difficult and challenging to get a clear read on how the presidential election, the first round of which will be on May 29, will turn out.

There will be three open presidential primaries (consultas) coinciding with congressional elections will be held on March 13. 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. A total of 15 candidates are competing in the three primaries, and only three will come out of them, so the primaries have almost become a ‘first round’ before the actual first round, and a lot of attention is focused on the primaries.

In 2018, the two presidential primaries on the right and left attracted a large number of voters (6.1 million and 3.5 million respectively) and their winners (incumbent president Iván Duque on the right, and Gustavo Petro on the left) received a significant momentum boost after the successful primaries. While nothing guarantees that the winner of a successful primary will do well in the first round (experiences from 2010 and 2014 show this), the three coalitions and their candidates hope and expect that the primaries, if they draw a large number of voters, will provide a big momentum boost to the winners.

Presidential candidates

To make sense of the presidential field, which can still change between now and March/May, 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 three coalitions are the Pacto Histórico on the left, the Coalición Centro Esperanza in the centre and the Equipo por Colombia on the right.

Pacto Histórico

The Pacto Histórico is a left-wing coalition formed in February 2021 spearheaded by Gustavo Petro, the runner-up in 2018 and presumptive nominee of the coalition. It is composed of different left-wing and centre-left parties, movements and individuals including Petro’s Colombia Humana, the Polo Democrático, the MAIS, the UP, Magdalena governor Carlos Caicedo’s Fuerza Ciudadana, the Afro-Colombian party ADA, Piedad Córdoba’s Poder Ciudadano movement, the Communist Party, Liberal Party dissidents (led by senator Luis Fernando Velasco), 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 will undoubtedly win the primary handily but he 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. The Pacto is running a single closed list for the Senate, with the exception of Fuerza Ciudadana which is running its own separate list.

There are five candidates in the Pacto primary.

• Gustavo Petro, the former mayor of Bogotá (2012–2015), senator (2006–2010, 2018–2022) and two-time presidential candidate (2010, 2018), is the presumptive nominee as he will win the primary easily. He is currently first in all polls for the first round and is the early favourite, although nothing is set in stone. He remains a controversial and polarizing figure, with passionate supporters on the left but also a lot of staunch opponents, primarily but not exclusively on the right. For good reason: he’s a complicated figure with a strong personality.
• Afro-Colombian community and environmental leader Francia Márquez, who gained national and international notoriety for opposing the forced eviction of her community for a mining concession and illegal mining in her native region. Her candidacy has received a lot of interest because she has an interesting and unique profile, and is outspoken and holds to her principles.
• The former Green governor of Nariño (2016–2019) Camilo Romero, representing a faction of the Greens which wants to ally with Petro. As governor, he had public disagreements with President Duque on major issues like illicit crop substitution, aerial aspersion with glyphosate and recognition of peasants’ rights. Since 2017, he has an open judicial investigation (collecting dust) for a corruption scandal and has also faced other criticisms related to his gubernatorial tenure.
• Arelis Uriana, the candidate of the MAIS, is a Wayúu woman from La Guajira who is the first indigenous woman to run for president, but is otherwise not very well known.
• Alfredo Saade, an evangelical leader from Valledupar brought to the coalition by Petro despite standing out from the rest on moral issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. It is very unclear how much following or connections he has with the Christian evangelical community, whereas there is evidence that Saade has played around in different parties on all sides, with little success.

Coalición Centro Esperanza

The Coalición Centro Esperanza is a centrist alternative coalition which until recently had been much busier fighting amongst itself 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. It seeks to be the moderate, ‘responsible’ and centrist middle ground between Petro and Uribe/the right (what Sergio 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. Ingrid Betancourt’s Green Oxygen (Verde Oxígeno), recently revived, left the coalition with Betancourt recently, though it remains part of the coalition’s list for Senate. They have 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.

There are five candidates in the ‘coalition of hope’:

• Sergio Fajardo, who finished third in 2018, is a former governor of Antioquia (2012–2015) and mayor of Medellín (2004–2007). Fajardo is a mathematician, former mayor of Medellín and governor of Antioquia, who has made opposition to traditional politics (including partisan politics), clientelism and corruption the trademarks of his political career. He avoids confrontation and he is a less polarizing figure, but his 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.
• Juan Manuel Galán, a former Liberal senator (2006–2018), is the son martyred politician Luis Carlos Galán, infamously murdered in August 1989 on the orders of Pablo Escobar and political rivals. His father’s legacy and the family name has made him a pretty well-known and popular figure, and in 2021 the Constitutional Court restored the legal recognition of the Nuevo Liberalismo as a party, on the grounds that the original party had disintegrated as a result of the armed conflict following Galán’s murder. One of his main proposals is to end the war on drugs by decriminalizing and regulating all drugs and focusing efforts on the dismantling of criminal drug trafficking networks.
• Alejandro Gaviria is an esteemed economist/academic who was health minister between 2012 and 2018. Gaviria is a committed social liberal who is openly atheist, 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. Popular with wealthy urbane liberal elites, it remains to be seen how widespread his support actually is.
• Jorge Enrique Robledo, a veteran left-wing leader and senator since 2002. He’s opposed the last three presidents and has often been applauded as one of the best congressmen for trying to hold governments accountable and denouncing a wide range of scandals over the years. He and Petro have really disliked each other for over 10 years. He is the candidate of Dignidad, a new party formed by a split in the Polo in 2020. He has a protectionist economic vision, very critical of the neoliberal economic model and the effects of the free trade agreement with the United States.
• Carlos Amaya, the former Green governor of Boyacá (2016–2019). He seeks to represent the Greens in the centrist coalition.

Equipo por Colombia

The Equipo por Colombia is a centre-right/right-wing coalition. It was nicknamed the “former mayors and former governors’ coalition” and the “coalition of experience”, in reference to one of the candidates’ main talking points: that together they collectively have significant experience, often leading executives. It includes the Conservative Party, the Partido de la U and the Christian evangelical party MIRA and a good chunk of Cambio Radical (CR). There was long speculation 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, former President Álvaro Uribe pushed his candidate, Óscar Iván Zuluaga to dump them before they dumped him.

The five candidates in the right-wing coalition are:

• The former two-term mayor of Barranquilla (2008–2011, 2016–2019), Alejandro ‘Alex’ Char. Char is the leader and most prominent figure of the Char family clan, one of the most powerful political and business clans in Colombia today, founded by his father Fuad Char. After years of crisis in Barranquilla, Char became the most popular mayor in the country (with approval ratings around 85–90%) and is credited with ‘transforming’ the city and making it something of a model for urban development, notably with flashy and fancy infrastructure projects. But this narrative has been cracking and showing its dark side including several accusations of corruption and a very traditional style of machine politics (clientelism, vote buying). Notably, the Hollywood-esque Aída Merlano vote buying scandal now looks to be coming dangerously close to the heart of the Char clan. Char’s candidacy relies on his powerful machines, and he’s avoided debates, media interviews and even large public events. He’s also stayed largely silent about his policy views or opinions on major issues, besides relying on the Barranquilla success narrative.
• Federico ‘Fico’ Gutiérrez, the former mayor of Medellín (2016–2019). In politics for over 20 years, he was elected mayor of Colombia’s second-largest city in 2015 as an independent, running a grassroots campaign (but with financial backing from the city’s powerful old business elite) and appealing both to fajardismo and uribismo. Fico enjoyed very high approvals throughout his term, because of his upfront style/showmanship, folksy populism and omnipresence (in the media and online). His priority as mayor was a hardline security policy but his record on this was very poor (key security indicators worsened). 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. Fico is positioning himself on the right and wants to be *the* anti-Petro candidate, repeatedly targeting Petro in his attacks.
• Enrique Peñalosa is a former two-term mayor of Bogotá (1998–2000, 2016–2019) and career politician who’s run in 10 of the 16 electoral cycles since 1990. The main legacy of his first term as mayor is Bogotá’s TransMilenio BRT system. He returned as mayor (after two failed mayoral runs and several failed attempts in national politics) in 2015, as an implacable opponent of Petro. His second term was not successful: he failed to deliver any big tangible infrastructure projects, although his main legacy will be finally awarding the contract for the metro in late 2019, although not without several more delays and a lot of controversy. He was hurt by his arrogant and aloof tone, his inability to communicate with the public, many gaffes, incessant bickering with Petro and getting bogged down in controversies. He was unpopular throughout his term. His several failed attempts at entering national politics, including three prior presidential runs (only one of which, in 2014, went to the first round), shows that he’s a poor campaigner and politician. Peñalosa was unable to collect enough signatures to get on the ballot as an independent, so he was endorsed by the Partido de la U. Peñalosa is a right-of-centre liberal.
• Senator David Barguil represents the Conservative Party. He’s a senator (since 2018) and two-term representative (2010–2018) from Córdoba, where he now leads his own political group. As congressman, he made a name for himself as a defender of consumers’ rights and critic of banks and the financial sectors’ abuses, sponsoring and supporting several pieces of legislation in these areas. But he also had one of the worst congressional attendance records in 2014–18, accused of missing over 70 plenary sessions, though he has now won two judicial cases fighting these accusations. Barguil has been a close ally of the Duque government and, like his party, has greatly benefited in return. Barguil is campaigning on a right-wing platform espousing traditional small-c conservative issues like security and family, though his strategy for the primary relies heavily on the Conservatives’ machines turning out for him.
• Senator Aydeé Lizarazo is the candidate of the MIRA, a testimonial party that is the political wing of the Church of God Ministry of Jesus Christ International. Since 2018, the MIRA has been aligned with the right, endorsing Duque in the 2018 election and supporting his government. Lizarazo was elected to the Senate in 2018.

Other candidates

There are seven remaining candidates currently competing outside of coalitions, going directly to the first round on their own. Some may yet drop out or ally with others. These seven candidates are:

The candidate of the ruling right-wing uribista Centro Democrático (CD) is former finance minister (2007–2010) Óscar Iván Zuluaga, who was the CD’s candidate in 2014, losing to President Santos in the runoff. Zuluaga is an experienced politician who has been been councillor, mayor, senator (2002–2006) and finance minister. Uribismo in 2022 is more unpopular, weaker, divided, more isolated and perhaps more radicalized than before. 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). Zuluaga was largely absent from national politics after 2017, when he was forced to suspend his presidential candidacy after his 2014 campaign was implicated in the Odebrecht scandal (Odebrecht paid Brazilian political strategist Duda Mendonça an extra $1.6 million for his work on Zuluaga’s campaign).

He only reappeared in 2021 and emerged as a weakened and divided uribismo’s best hope, or least worst option, for 2022. He doesn’t represent renewal and isn’t a fresh face, which are two things seen as being in high demand in 2022. 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 ally with someone else who is in a better position to defeat Petro in June.

The viral and enigmatic phenomenon of the campaign is Rodolfo Hernández, a 76-year-old eccentric and foul-mouthed businessman turned mayor of Bucaramanga in 2015. Hernández is a businessman who founded a construction company in the 1970s, and in 2015 ran a quixotic, self-funded barebones mayoral campaign in Bucaramanga (Santander) with a strident anti-corruption and anti-politics discourse. His atypical campaign, which talked about Immanuel Kant’s categorial imperative and used the Pi symbol, and had no political or machine support, unexpectedly won. 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’, 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, although his black mark is a trash scandal for which he faces disciplinary and corruption charges. Rodolfo is known for his brash, coarse and vulgar style, a long list of controversial statements and slapping a councillor in the face in 2018. Rodolfo was popular as mayor and was able to elect his preferred successor as mayor (with whom he has since broken) and formed his own movement, the Liga de Gobernantes Anticorrupción.

Rodolfo is now second in the polls behind Petro, with room to grow, 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 will be fixed by “stopping the stealing”. He is self-funded, only has a very small campaign team, relies on Facebook and TikTok instead of large campaign events, refuses to ally with anyone else (even though many — from both left and right — want to ally with him) and relishes the confusion about his own ideological position (right? left? Trumpian demagogue?). But his Liga was only able to put together one list, for the House in Santander, and he will not be on any ballot besides that in March, while most of his opponents will be. 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 is well-known around the world 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 has recently returned to politics, with her old political party (Green Oxygen), revived in 2021 on the basis of the Constitutional Court’s ruling.

Betancourt facilitated and mediated the creation of the centrist coalition but didn’t seem interested in a presidential candidacy of her own, until she announced her candidacy on January 18 without telling anyone beforehand. Shortly afterwards, she had a strong clash with Alejandro Gaviria during a debate, calling him out for having received the endorsements of two traditional politicians. She set two ultimatums demanding that the coalition take a strong position and reject these endorsements. Unsatisfied by the coalition’s response, she withdrew from it — a decision which has left some of her old allies quite bitter.

In her first political career before being kidnapped, as a representative (1994–1998) and senator (1998–2002), she had a direct and irreverent tone raging against corruption, a political style which was less common in the 1990s (especially for a woman) and made her rather controversial and unpopular. She ran for president in 2002 and, when she was kidnapped, she was scoring very low in the polls. During her years-long captivity, she was one of the most famous victims of the FARC, in part because she was a dual French-Colombian national who could count on political support in France. She spent several years abroad after being rescued and liberated in 2008, and only returned to Colombian politics in 2018 (when she endorsed Petro in the runoff) and in 2021. Betancourt still has a powerful life story and an anti-corruption message (with the metaphor that Colombia is ‘held hostage’ by it).

The former governor of Antioquia (2016–2019) and mayor of Medellín (2000–2003), Luis Pérez, was at the centre of a firestorm on the left in November 2021 when there was strong speculation that he’d join the Pacto, after rapprochements with Petro. This did not materialize in the end for various reasons, and he has secured his own ballot access by collecting over 1 million signatures, but he’s still undoubtedly cooking something up with Petro. Pérez caused such a ruckus on the left because he’s the quintessential traditional populist politician with all that entails (opportunism, accusations of corruption, clientelism) and because of his participation in Operation Orion, a violent military operation in Medellín’s Comuna 13 in 2002 against the guerrilla’s urban militias. Likely carried out in complicity with paramilitary groups, Operation Orion left the civilian population caught in the crossfire, and led to forced displacements, disappearances and extrajudicial assassinations. Though Petro claimed Pérez had little to do with it since the operation was ordered by President Uribe, Pérez still defends it today as a ‘pacification’. Pérez has also been a political windvane: he’s not uribista, but had uribista sympathies in the past (in 2019 he wrote embarrassingly sycophantic book heaping praise on Uribe), but now he’s flirting with the left, and is now close to the controversial incumbent left-leaning populist-ish mayor of Medellín Daniel Quintero. Like Petro, he strongly dislikes Sergio Fajardo (the two have been rivals for decades).

Luis Gilberto Murillo, Santos’ former environment minister (2016–2018) and former governor of Chocó (1998–1999, 2012), is the candidate of Colombia Renaciente, a party which obtained recognition as an Afro-Colombian ‘ethnic’ party by winning one of the two Afro seats in 2018, and adopted its current name in 2019. Murillo announced his candidacy in mid-January and withdrew from the centrist coalition because he felt that they were blocking his candidacy. He was twice elected governor of Chocó (in 1997 and 2011) but was unable to finish either term, being removed from office both times — the second time, in 2012, for a six month jail sentence he received in 1997 for misusing public funds. His removal from office was orchestrated by his opponents, the traditional corupt and criminal-linked political clans of Chocó. Murillo was a former member of Cambio Radical (CR), but left the party in 2017 after CR withdrew from the governing coalition. Murillo’s campaign wants to represent “the other Colombia, the deep Colombia”, referring the marginalized ethnic minorities (Afro-Colombians and indigenous) and peripheral regions, and focuses on issues like implementing the peace agreement and environmental protection.

Evangelical pastor and senator John Milton Rodríguez seeks to be the candidate of the Christian right party Colombia Justa Libres (CJL), though he may be unable to register his candidacy because of a feud with a rival faction of the party which has challenged his candidacy. Rodríguez is an evangelical pastor from Cali, founder of the evangelical church Misión Paz a la Naciones (which claims 25,000 faithful and 32 branches in the country). Rodríguez, self-proclaimed apostle of his church, and his family also own a university, a foundation (which has obtained public contracts), two non-profit corporations incorporated in Florida and a foundation registered in Panama. He gained political prominence as one of the leading evangelical supporters of the No during the peace plebiscite, and used this newfound fame to run for Senate in 2018 for the new right-wing evangelical party Colombia Justa Libres. He has championed 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.

Enrique Gómez Martínez 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 (for which the FARC admitted responsibility in 2020, but this version has been questioned by the family who believe the assassination was a state crime). 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 ruling. 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 says that he’s 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.

Conclusion

More twists and turns are guaranteed between now and March and May. I hope this post helped make sense of some of it all. Keep reading, there’ll be much more coming up!