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Colombia election results: Zuluaga edges out Santos in first round

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Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s president, is officially in trouble. Colombia Flag Icon

After the first round of Colombia’s residential vote today, Santos finished around 3.5% behind Óscar Iván Zuluaga, a more hardline conservative backed by former president Álvaro Uribe, whose campaign won increasing support from voters over the past two months.

Here are the results:

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As widely expected prior to today’s voting, Zuluaga and Santos will now advance to a runoff on June 15.

Santos was first elected in 2010, running with Uribe’s support and on his record as defense minister under Uribe. The former president is best known for his militarized campaign against what remained of Colombia’s drug cartels in the 2000s and its leftist guerrillas, notably the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), is now opposing Santos. Though Santos largely helped Uribe carry out his quasi-military campaign against the Marxist FARC, which has been waging an insurgency against the Colombian government since 1964, Santos has opened the most comprehensive and promise peace negotiations with FARC to date.

Santos’s narrow first-round loss may actually bolster his chances in the runoff. Despite Zuluaga’s surge over the past two months, the runoff will almost certainly become a referendum on the FARC negotiations.

Expect the Colombian left to line up behind Santos as a matter of national unity to save the peace talks, including those voters who supported López and Peñalosa in the first round (it’s very difficult to imagine Zuluaga winning over many of their supporters) and, probably, a fair number of Ramírez supporters as well. If you add up the combined support of Santos, López and Peñalosa, it’s over 49% of the first-round vote. Given a choice between continuing the FARC talks or returning to a more militarized, Uribe-style approach, it’s easy to believe that a ‘peace front’ will emerge to bolster Santos on June 15.

So on paper, Santos has the easier route to victory — but that’s only so long as Santos holds onto his first-round base. There’s a chance that Zuluaga, having weakened Santos, could pull soft voters away from Santos if he’s aggressive enough in the next three weeks.

But the last month of the campaign has been characterized by scandal and dirty politics. Hackers with connections to the Zuluaga campaign are accused of illegally obtaining confidential information related to the FARC negotiations, while Santos’s campaign manager, is accused of taking millions in exchange for intervening on behalf of drug dealers trying to avoid extradition to the United States. There’s no way to know whether new revelations might change the dynamic of the race in the next three weeks in unpredictable ways.

Moreover, Zuluaga seems to have outmaneuvered Santos with his strong stand against the FARC, making Santos seem weak in comparison. Meanwhile, Zuluaga has arguably also outmaneuvered Santos on bread-and-butter economic issues. While the economy has grown at a stead pace of between 4% and 5% in the past four years, growth has been uneven, and Zuluaga has fashioned a more populist campaign based on promises of greater social spending and higher employment.

The biggest surprise might be that Enrique Peñalosa, a moderate, anti-corruption candidate, who served as the mayor of Bogotá between 1998 and 2001, finished far behind in fifth place. At one point earlier this spring, Peñalosa had surged into second place, and several polls showed that he would even defeat Santos in a runoff. But as Zuluaga became an increasingly serious contender, Peñalosa’s support collapsed, and even top leaders within the newly formed Alianza Verde (Green Alliance) defected to indicate their support for Santos.

Marta Lucía Ramírez, the candidate of the Partido Conservador Colombiano (Colombian Conservative Party), won just over 15% of the vote, as did Clara López, the candidate of the leftist Polo Democrático Alternativo (Alternative Democratic Pole).

Uribe, who formed a new political party last year, Centro Democrático (Democratic Center), won a seat in the Colombian Senado (Senate) in congressional elections earlier in March.

Santos is backed by a trio of parties, the centrist Partido Liberal Colombiano (the Colombian Liberal Party), the Partido Social de Unidad Nacional (Social Party of National Unity, ‘Party of the U’), and Cambio Radical (Radical Change).

How the Peñalosa campaign fell apart in Colombia

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On paper, Enrique Peñalosa looks like the best president Colombia might never have.Colombia Flag Icon

As mayor of Bogotá between 1998 and 2001, Peñalosa introduced the widely popular TransMilenio rapid bus system, expanded a sprawling network of bicycle paths, and generally built upon the foundation on the progress established by his predecessor, Antanas Mockus. Together, Mockus and Peñalosa arguably transformed Bogotá into one of the most developed urban spaces in Latin America.

Six weeks ago, Peñalosa seemed to have the momentum in Colombia’s presidential election, building on his reputation as a moderate, non-corrupt public official. Poll after poll showed him vaulting into second place and gaining ground against the incumbent, Juan Manuel Santos. Early in April, polls started showing that he was nearing 20% support and, more incredibly, that voters preferred Peñalosa to Santos in a hypothetical runoff.

That’s all before Óscar Iván Zuluaga, the conservative candidate allied with former president Álvaro Uribe, started gaining traction. With Colombians set to vote on Sunday in what will likely be the first of two rounds of their presidential election, Zuluaga is now tied with Santos, according to polls, and either one could win the June 15 runoff.

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RELATED: Five reasons why Zuluaga is beating Santos
in Colombia’s election

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Meanwhile, Peñalosa has fallen back to single digits in polls. No one gives him much of a chance to advance to a runoff — in contrast to Mockus, who finished second in the 2010 presidential election as the candidate of the Partido Verde Colombiano (Colombian Green Party). In that election, Santos, running with Uribe’s support and on his record as Uribe’s defense minister, easily dispatched Mockus by a margin of 69.1% to 27.5%, given Mockus’s leftist politics.

This time around, many voters otherwise inclined to support Peñalosa have instead lined up behind Santos to block Zuluaga’s election, which would almost certainly torpedo the Santos administration’s current negotiations to bring to an end the 50-year guerrilla insurgency of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). Continue reading How the Peñalosa campaign fell apart in Colombia

Five reasons why Zuluaga is beating Santos in Colombia’s election

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Two months ago, Colombia’s president Juan Manuel Santos,  a former defense minister, who launched the most wide-ranging peace talks with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), looked like a lock for reelection.Colombia Flag Icon

Since late March, however, Santos has flatlined in the polls and his conservative rival, Óscar Iván Zuluaga, has nearly doubled his support — to the point where Santos and Zuluaga are now tied heading into the first round of the presidential election on May 25. Some polls show Zuluaga outpacing Santos in the runoff vote, which will take place on June 15 if, as widely predicted, no candidate wins a 50% majority this weekend.

The race has largely (though not entirely) become a referendum on the FARC peace talks, the most serious attempt by any Colombian government to seek a truce with the guerrilla movement since it began in 1964. Santos has become the ‘peace’ candidate, arguing that the negotiations are making steady progress and that voters should give him a mandate to continue the talks.

Zuluaga and his political mentor, former president Álvaro Uribe, argue that it’s wrong to offer incentives to FARC leaders, railing that they belong in prison, not discussing the possibility of winning seats in Colombia’s Congreso (Congress).

Zuluaga’s election would impose new conditions on the peace negotiations that would almost certainly bring them to an abrupt end, and he would return to the military-style campaigns designed to eradicate and eliminate FARC that were common in the Uribe era. Though Uribe presided over the widespread pacification of Colombia in the mid-2000s, Santos has argued that the FARC has been so weakened that it’s time for negotiations.

Most Colombians long ago lost patience with FARC, which has increasingly turned to drug trafficking to finance its Marxist guerrilla activities, and most Colombians also lost patience with the drug-financed right-wing paramilitary units that sprang up in the 1980s and 1990s in resistance to FARC. Voters seem willing to support Santos’s efforts to normalize relations with FARC if the talks will end the violent standoff for good.

FARC, for its part, seems to be working to bolster Santos’s political standing, declaring a unilateral ceasefire between May 20 and May 28, and working to complete the third of five issues-based agreements this week. The accord addresses controlling trade in illegal drugs. Zuluaga and Uribe argue that it’s unwise to discuss drug policy with FARC, but Santos has argued that this accord in particular could eradicate what’s left of the illegal coca trade in Colombia.

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In an Ipsos poll conducted between March 14 and 16, Santos (pictured above) led with 24% of the vote, while Zuluaga was tied in second place in single digits, along with the candidate of the Alianza Verde (Green Alliance), Enrique Peñalosa, and the candidate of the Polo Democrático Alternativo (Alternative Democratic Pole), Clara López. With 19% of survey participants proclaiming they would cast a blank vote and with another 27% of voters undecided, however, the race was still fluid.

In an Ipsos poll conducted between May 13 and 15, Zuluaga led with 29.5%, with 28.5% for Santos, 10.1% for López, 9.7% for the candidate of the Partido Conservador Colombiano (Colombian Conservative Party), Marta Lucía Ramírez, and just 9.4% for Peñalosa, whose support was rising in late March and April. It’s been a particularly brutal fall for Peñalosa, who was the only candidate throughout the spring who seemed able to defeat Santos in a runoff.

The election campaign has turned nasty this month, with dual scandals implicating both Santos and Zuluaga — and both of them involve the nasty intersection of politics and illegal drugs in Colombian politics.

Two weeks ago, Santos’s campaign manager, J.J. Rendon, a Venezuelan political operative who’s something akin to the Karl Rove of Latin American politics, resigned after he was accused of receiving $12 million for his role in preventing the extradition of a handful of Colombian drug traffickers to the United States. Rendon didn’t deny intervening, but he denied accepting money.

But the more serious scandal broke last week, when Zuluaga and his former campaign manager, Luis Alfonso Hoyos, were shown in video footage allegedly receiving a briefing from a campaign consultant, Andres Sepulveda, on the FARC talks based on illegal surveillance. Though Sepulveda has since been arrested, Zuluaga has argued the video is a fabrication. Although the scandal could ultimately result in criminal charges for Zuluaga, it’s even more damaging as a reminder of the civil liberties abuses of the Uribe era. Nonetheless, the accusations (so far) haven’t seemed to dent Zuluaga’s growing lead.

So what’s going on? What explains Zuluaga’s meteoric rise?

Here are six reasons that explain why Zuluaga is now the slight favorite to become Colombia’s next president. Continue reading Five reasons why Zuluaga is beating Santos in Colombia’s election

Three reasons why Petro’s removal as Bogotá mayor could harm Santos

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In a decision that could widely affect the May presidential election, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos has confirmed the previous decision of Colombian inspector-general Alejandro Ordóñez to remove Gustavo Petro, a leftist and former M-19 rebel leader, as Bogotá’s mayor.Colombia Flag Icon

Ordóñez, a staunchly right-wing conservative close to former president Álvaro Uribe, ordered Petro’s removal last December on the questionable basis of Petro’s actions during a garbage collection strike in December 2012. Ordóñez claimed that Petro’s threat to replace public workers with private garbage collectors amounted to abuse of office. In addition to Petro’s removal, Ordóñez also banned Petro from holding public office for 15 years.

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RELATED: Uribe returns to Colombian political life as senator

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Petro, who was facing an April 6 recall election in any event, appealed Ordóñez’s decision, but the Colombian Council of State refused to overturn it. Santos affirmed Petro’s removal today, naming labor minister Rafael Pardo as Bogotá’s interim mayor, despite an order from the Inter-American Human Rights Commission upholding Petro’s right to remain mayor. Accordingly, Santos’s decision could potentially endanger Colombia’s seat within the Organization of American States.

Presumably, Bogotá residents will go to the polls later this spring or summer to choose Petro’s permanent replacement.

In the meanwhile, Santos’s decision leaves him vulnerable on at least three fronts as the May 25 presidential election approaches. Santos appears increasingly likely to face a June 15 presidential runoff, against either former Bogotá mayor Enrique Peñalosa or former finance minister and Uribe ally Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, the candidate of Uribe’s newly formed politics vehicle, Centro Democrático (Democratic Center). Continue reading Three reasons why Petro’s removal as Bogotá mayor could harm Santos

“Islam-is-good-for-business”: A new model for Islamist parties?

With the presidential election in Egypt looming in just nine days, and with last week’s Algerian parliamentary election resulting in somewhat freer and fairer voting, Fawaz A. Gerges pen a very thoughtful piece in openDemocracy about the marriage of free-market capitalism and Islamism:

Islamist parties are increasingly becoming “service” parties: an acknowledgment that political legitimacy and the likelihood of re-election rests on the ability to deliver jobs, economic growth, and to demonstrate transparency. This factor introduces a huge degree of pragmatism in their policies. The example of Turkey, especially its economic success, has had a major impact on Arab Islamists, many of whom would like to emulate the Turkish model. The Arab Islamists have, in other words, understood the truth of the slogan, “It is the economy, stupid!” The Turkish model, with the religiously observant provincial bourgeoisie as its kingpin, also acts as a reminder that Islam and capitalism are mutually reinforcing and compatible.

It is notable that the Islamists’ economic agenda does not espouse a distinctive “Islamic” economic model. This is unsurprising, however, as an Islamic economic model does not exist. Islamists suffer from a paucity of original ideas on the economy and have not even developed a blueprint to tackle the structural socioeconomic crisis in Arab societies.

Nevertheless, what distinguishes centrist religious-based groups from their leftist and nationalist counterparts is a friendly sensibility toward business activities including wealth accumulation and free-market economics. Islamism is a bourgeois movement consisting mostly of middle-class professionals, businessmen, shopkeepers, petty merchants and traders.

If there is a slogan that best describes Islamists’ economic attitude, it would be: “Islam-is-good-for-business”.

FLN wins Algerian election; Islamist ‘Green Alliance’ coalition alleges fraud after weak third-place finish

The first news of an election result from Thursday’s Algerian parliamentary elections has trickled in.

It appears that the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale, or FLN) has won 220 of the 462 seats in the parliament.

The National Rally for Democracy, the party of Algeria’s current prime minister Ahmed Ouyahia, won second place with 68 seats, giving the government a comfortable majority at a time of incredible disenchantment within Algeria.

The alliance of Algeria’s top Islamist parties, the so-called ‘Green Alliance’, won third place with just 48 seats, fewer seats than the parties previously held in the prior parliament, even though the number of seats in Algeria’s parliament has been expanded by 73 seats.

The Socialist Forces Front appears to have won 21 seats (it currently had no representation) and Louisa Hanoune’s Worker’s Party has won 20 seats (down from 26 in the previous assembly) — both are leftist, secular parties.  No other party won seats in double digits.

Color me skeptical, but I have doubts about just how free and fair the elections were on the basis of a result that gives the government a comfortable majority — the government also claims that turnout has been just under 45%, which is significantly higher than the 2007 election and after a campaign noted for massive apathy about the efficacy of Thursday’s vote.  The Green Alliance has already alleged widespread fraud on the basis of its own observations.

The FLN has ruled Algeria since 1962, and is itself a manifestation of the resistance group that fought for independence in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Algeria’s bloody war against France.  It is the ossified party of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has attempted to use the parliamentary election as a showcase of limited reforms that he has claimed have led to a more open Algeria in the face of ‘Arab spring’ protests in the Middle East, protests that have forced three longtime dictators out of power in North Africa since January 2011.  Continue reading FLN wins Algerian election; Islamist ‘Green Alliance’ coalition alleges fraud after weak third-place finish