The newspaper El Siglo published a description of the results of the October 29 election that raises interesting questions about how politics works today. Let’s take two examples:
1) The Department of Tolima: Former congresswoman Adriana Magali Matiz won with the support of the Conservative Party and the co-support of Centro Democrático, Cambio Radical, ASI, ADA and Colombia Renaciente.
2) Bolívar Department: Former congressman Yamil Arana Padaui won with the support of the Conservative Party and co-support of the Liberal Party, the Independent Social Alliance, Cambio Radical, La U, Centro Democrático, Fuerza de la Paz and Colombia Renaciente.
The list of governors and mayors who won in the regional elections from almost all parties has the same characteristics. The system of recommendations and co-applications for candidates now resembles a stock exchange. Before the so-called “political takeover offer” (public share offer), i.e. on election day, the parties jointly bet on one person. Similar to stock buyers, but in the area of political competition.
Continuing the analogy, candidates issue “policies” to preferred buyers who are “bought out” by the parties. Could parties buy shares from two different candidates? That would go against common sense; However, politics is not necessarily the realm of common sense. After the takeover offer (election day), additional shares can be sold to the losing parties if they want to be part of the government coalition.
With their vote, the public, in their own way, acquires a “stake” in the candidate in the hope that it will lead to a better life for them during the four years the government exists. Those who chose the winner feel compelled to do well or are disappointed when he turns out to be a disaster, corrupt, or simply incompetent (or all of the above).
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Is it a bad system compared to a system of pure one-party support for a single candidate? This doesn’t seem bad per se, because 1) given the fragmentation of the political system, supporting a single party today would realistically not be enough to win; and 2) Once in government, the winner needs a large coalition of parties to govern. Therefore, it is good that this coalition was already formed beforehand to select the candidate.
The criticism could be that political ideology does not play a role and only cold convenience prevails, derived from power calculations, which simply turns the political system into a transactional system of political micro-enterprises that participate in elections and then take over their budget and contracts for public works.
Furthermore, it can be criticized that it is not just the “political actions” that represent support for a candidate and a program that are negotiated, but the actual values of a political vision, ethics and democracy. This is of course very harmful, and you can’t say that it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen all the time, but with sufficient and unfortunate frequency.
However, this criticism would also apply to the one-party endorsement system. The solution must be an effective fight against corruption and not necessarily ban the system of multi-party guarantees and co-signatures.
Furthermore, it could be argued (which needs to be proven through serious research) that generally parties with some political similarity unite to support a candidate. Of course, in some cases there are liberals and conservatives supporting candidates that would have been unthinkable 50 years ago.
There’s something good here. Politics in the Colombian regions is becoming more of a practical matter than a religious one, as was the case 60 years ago when one party’s parties could start killing another’s.
However, when it comes to co-endorsements, some degree of ideological affinity is advisable. One could say that candidates from the extreme left or the extreme right tend to form coalitions of like-minded parties. This was the case with the Historic Pact in the 2022 presidential elections, when Colombia Humana joined forces with the Communist Party, the Comunes, the Patriotic Union, the Fuerza Ciudadana and the Polo Democrático, among others.
Today, however, the boundaries between parties are porous and blurred, and enemies are uniting in certain regions, which is a good thing. This system could be interpreted as a way to reduce political risk. When these policy decisions are aggregated across the country, a more stable political system emerges. Less prone to drastic policy changes and extreme ideologies because governing requires negotiating with many people.
While the logic of regional elections cannot be applied to national elections, the microphysics of power, to use a phrase popularized by the French philosopher Michel Foucault, is important in all types of elections.
Colombian politics works much like a stock market and, like it or not, this is crucial for institutional stability, the proliferation and survival of individual political actors, and the design of campaigns.
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