Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla fighter who promised economic and social reforms to fight poverty, inequality and exclusion during the election campaign, became the first leftwing president in Colombia’s history this Sunday (19). (more on that in the video above).
Former mayor of Bogotá and leading opposition senator, he defeated eccentric businessman Rodolfo Hernández and will succeed Iván Duque.
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Petro won 50.8% of the 20 million votes and Hernández 46.9%, according to information attributed to the national ballot board by Reuters. Ahead of the vote, polls pointed to a technically tied dispute.
An economist, former M19 guerrilla operative, Gustavo Petro, 62, was the candidate for the Historic Pact and had as a platform measures that incite fear among businesspeople and the financial market. In the first ballot she had received 40.34% of the votes.
“The change we are proposing today is to overthrow this corrupt regime and remove the thief and murderer from power,” Petro said at a May 16 political event, making a strong reference to the political status quo in Colombia .
In Sunday’s race, he defeated independent candidate Rodolfo Hernández, a 77yearold engineer who is a member of the Governors’ AntiCorruption League and proposed cutting government spending and fighting corruption despite being investigated on suspicion of committing the same crime became. .
Hernández surprised the first round (with 28.1% of the vote) by presenting an agenda that included supplying drugs to drug addicts and fighting drug trafficking, among other things.
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- Understand: the context of the Petro x Hernández dispute
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past as a guerrilla
1 of 3 Gustavo Petro during the presidential campaign in Colombia in 2022 — Photo: REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez
Gustavo Petro during the 2022 presidential campaign in Colombia — Photo: REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez
Gustavo Petro was born on April 19, 1960 in the city of Ciénaga de Oro, in the province of Córdoba. Ten years later, on his birthday, an election allegedly rigged by Colombia’s conservative wing took place. This mobilized the creation of the Movimento 19 de Abril guerrilla group, known as M19.
At the age of 17, Petro joined M19 and his participation in the group marked his entire political career. He was arrested in 1985 for illegal gun possession. According to his own statements, he was tortured by the army and then served 18 months in prison.
Because he was trapped, Petro did not take part in one of the most conspicuous attacks in M19 history. On November 6 and 7, 1985, the group entered the Palace of Justice and took more than 300 people hostage. The takeover lasted 28 hours and ended in a clash with the army. The action left more than 100 dead, including Supreme Court President Alfonso Reyes Echandía.
Parallel to his role in the guerrillas, Petro completed his studies in economics at the Externado University in Bogotá.
The guerrilla group morphed into a political party in 1990, becoming the M19 Democratic Alliance. Petro was one of the founders.
His party actively participated in the creation of the new Colombian constitution in 1990. In 1991, Petro was elected MP for a fouryear term. Then, after receiving death threats, he spent two years in Belgium as an employee of the Colombian embassy. In 1998 he served a second term as MP, but for a different party he founded with other excombatants who left the M19.
He gained greater political notoriety as a senator between 2006 and 2010, the third most. He gained great popularity through allegations of corruption. It revealed links between politicians and criminal groups, as well as illegal schemes involving thenPresident Álvaro Uribe.
He ran for the presidency for the first time in 2010 but received just over 9% of the vote.
After the defeat, he ran for mayor of Bogotá, an election in which he emerged victorious. Petro boasts of creating the Women’s Secretariat during his tenure as mayor and for social advances in health, employment and poverty reduction.
In 2018, while running for president again, Petro was criticized for his friendship with late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. He was accused by the opposition of wanting to turn the country into a Venezuela. He lost the election on the second ballot against Ivan Duque.
2 of 3 Gustavo Petro in the 2018 presidential campaign — Photo: Reuters/Fred Builes
Gustavo Petro in the 2018 presidential campaign — Photo: Reuters/Fred Builes
In an interview with the Colombian newspaper Semana, Petro said that the words “right” and “left” are not good definitions of political orientation these days. He proposes a different prism: “the politics of life or the politics of death”.
Within this classification he classifies Nicolás Maduro as a “politician of death”. He criticizes the President of Venezuela for not wanting to free the country from oil dependence. Petro’s criticism makes campaign sense given that one of his campaign promises is to invest in cleaner energy sources.
As for Hugo Chávez, who preceded Maduro in Venezuela’s presidency, his opinion is different. Petro said in the same interview that Chávez “tried to take Venezuela off oil but failed.” He said he shares the vision of the former Venezuelan president and intends to free Colombia from fossil fuel dependency.
Earlier this year, according to Dinero magazine, Maduro criticized the Colombian left, calling it a coward. Petro replied and said that cowards are the ones who don’t embrace democracy.
However, that hasn’t stopped the opposition from continuing to compare him to Maduro, as they did in the last election. Iván Duque has voiced similar criticism back in 2018 when the two were also rivals and Petro lost the position to Duque.
The rivalry between Iván Duque and Gustavo Petro is old. Duque was supported by former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who faced corruption allegations when he was Petro’s senator.
Presidential election campaign 2022
3 of 3 Gustavo Petro campaigning for the Colombian presidency in 2022 — Photo: REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez
Gustavo Petro campaigning for the Colombian presidency in 2022 — Photo: REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez
Although still stuck in the image of a guerrilla, Gustavo Petro, who is now 62, had a more peaceful path in 2022. 0.9% of the votes.
With a government proposal heavily focused on internal action in Colombia, Petro doesn’t talk much in his speeches and interviews about other Latin American countries or what the relationship of a Colombia he governs with Brazil would be like. His projects for the Amazon mention only the Colombian part of the forest.
Referring to the international issue, he cites an interest in alternative energy production that is less dependent on fossil fuels. In an interview with the American magazine “Time”, he mentioned that he would like to see a major alliance of countries in the fight against global warming and “a transition in Latin America to a decarbonised, productive and technologybased economy”.
Petro won support for his promises to correct the country’s deep income inequality. Among them is a proposal that is controversial among economists: the guarantee of a minimum pension for the poorest. The problem is where the money would come from. Petro proposes transferring private pension funds to the sovereign wealth fund and using that amount to fund the government project.
However, investors have warned that the pension plan and its promise to halt oil projects could threaten the stability of the country’s economy.