Colombian Politics and Elections

[icc]

It appears Galán may have won the Bogotá mayoralty in the first round.

[icc]

It appears Galán may have won the Bogotá mayoralty in the first round.

Yep, quite comfortably. All contests are basically going as Hash laid out, with the partial exception of Cali, where Eder looks to have beaten Ortíz.

Both Fico and Char are winning over 70% in their contests.

[Hash]

Bogotá (91% reporting):
Galán 48.9%
Oviedo 20.1%
Bolívar 18.7%
Blank 4.8%

Huge landslide for Galán, disaster for petrismo.

Medellín (49%)
Fico 73.4%
Upegui 10%
Blank 7.2%
Corredor 2.7%

Fico landslide, bigger than expected by a few points.

Cali (45%)
Éder 41.6%
Ortíz 27%
Rentería 10.8%
Blank 10.1%
Torres 4.3%

Éder wins by a very big margin in the end, it seems like Miyerlandi Torres evaporated in the end in Éder's favour.

Barranquilla (41%)
Char 73.7%
Blank 10.2%
Bohórquez 9.1%

Barranquilla gonna Barranquilla.

Cartagena (30%)
Dumek 42.3%
Bejarano 15.4%
Pinedo 10.6%
Blank 9.8%
García Tirado 9.3%

Dumek Turbay probably wins this comfortably.

Bucaramanga (70%)
Beltrán 34.3%
Parra 15.2%
Oviedo 12.8%
Serpa 8.7%
Ordóñez 8.4%

Strong victort for Beltrán over a divided rest of the field.

Antioquia (42%)
Rendón 38.7%
Pérez 21.2%
Suárez 14.1%
Blank 10.4%
Restrepo 8.8%
Tobón 2.1%

Seems like Rendón is in a very good position so far to win a clear victory over Pérez, a major victory for uribismo.

Valle (50%)
Toro 42.2%
Blank 28.3%
Lozano 11.8%
Gómez 7%
Castro 5.8%

Toro wins with a good but not amazing result - nowhere close to her ally Clara Luz Roldán's big win in 2019 - but benefits from a divided opposition.

Atlántico (40%)
Verano 50.4%
Varela 28.9%
Blank 11.8%

Verano on track for a solid victory.

Santander (58%)
Juvenal Díaz 39.5%
Mantilla 18.6%
Ferley Sierra 17.9%
Rodolfo 12%

Clear victory for Juvenal Díaz.

Cundinamarca (74%)
Rey 57.6%
Blank 12.8%
Gutiérrez 10.6%

Landslide for Jorge Rey, disastrous result for Nancy Patricia Gutiérrez.

[Mike88]

So, in general, a "slap in the face" of Petro?

[Hash]

So, in general, a "slap in the face" of Petro?

Yes, but as I wrote before it was to be expected for a variety of factors. I'd still hesitate to call this a referendum against Petro, but in Bogotá and major cities that certainly played a fairly big role. Bogotá is an utter disaster for petrismo (third place with under 20% is horrendous), and it will be the most notable result and one that will make it impossible for petrismo to put a positive swing on any outcome. Gustavo Bolívar, who is always quite straightforward and brutally honest, has said that Pacto is broken and admitted that there's been a vote against the government. In the other cities it was quite as expected.

In gubernatorial races, it seems as if the Pacto has won in Nariño and Amazonas, plus Magdalena via Fuerza Ciudadana (the party of outgoing governor Carlos Caicedo). In mayoral races, the Pacto is trailing by around 400 votes in Popayán and Caicedo's candidate in Santa Marta is trailing by less than 50 votes in a very close race, but that's about it for the left.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Interestingly, Manizales easily elected a former mayor who was lauded for his commitment to public works. Maybe I am reading too much into it, but I wonder if Colombians were burned by Petro failing to deliver and are looking to competency as a powerful message right now.

[Velasco]

Eloquent congratulation post from acting mayor Claudia López. I should have been following this to understand better the political context, but ir's clear there's a strained relationship between the local and the national governments

https://twitter.com/ClaudiaLopez/status/1718754492101869927?t=V-k4JsFcuHgwW_zu2b...

[Hash]

Bogotá council makeup:

Greens 15% - 8 seats (-4)
NL-EM 14.3% - 8 seats (+6)
Pacto 13.5% - 7 seats (-1)
CD 12.8% - 7 seats (+2)
Liberal 10.6% - 6 seats (-1)
CR-La U-MIRA 7.8% - 4 seats (-2)
LARA 4.9% - 2 seats (+1)
Conservative-CJL 3.1% - 1 seat (-3)
MSN-NFD 1.9% - 1 seat (+1)
Dignidad & Compromiso 1.2% - 0 seats
ED 0.6%
FC 0.6%
Liga 0.2%
Creemos 0.2%
AICO 0.2%
Blank votes 13.2%
+1 ex officio runner-up seat for Oviedo

The Greens remain the largest party but lose four seats from the highwater mark of 2019, although this is still a positive result for them, considering they had no mayoral candidate and had an unpopular administration weighing them down. In a small surprise, the top candidate on the Green list is political TikToker Julián Triana (33.4k votes), who was personally congratulated on his victory by Petro on Twitter (who said that his 15-year-old daughter would have voted for him), followed by four-term incumbent Edward Aníbal Arias (32.1k), newcomer Andrés García Vargas (24.8k), very close Claudia López ally Julián Rodríguez Sastoque (24.8k), retired football player Leandro Castellanos (23.4k), three-term incumbent/daughter of the president of the Senate Iván Name María Clara Name (22.8k), one-term councillor Andrés Darío Onzaga (20.2k) and one-term councillor Julián Espinosa (19.5k). The list's top candidate, Jorge Torres (centre-right mockusian, ex-husband of Green rep. Katherine Miranda) seems to have once again narrowly lost (15.6k). The very anti-Claudia López leftist incumbent Diego Cancino has also lost very badly (just 7,500 votes).

As expected, significant gains for Nuevo Liberalismo (in coalition with En Marcha) as the coattails of Galán's victory, up from the two seats won by the galanista list in 2019. It's also interesting that they got a full 125,000 votes just for the logo (voting just for the list logo without voting for any specific candidate) which is unusual and a sign of a strong opinion vote. Incumbent councillor Juan Baena has the most votes by far (49k), followed some distance behind by Juan Manuel Díaz (brother of a retiring Conservative councillor), Jesús David Araque (Usaquén alderman), Ricardo Correa (son of a former eight-term councillor implicated in the carrusel de la contratación scandal), Cristina Calderón Restrepo, Juan David Quintero (En Marcha), Fernando López Gutiérrez (councillor from 1998 to 2015, ex-CR) and David Saavedra (Galán loyalist). A mix of traditional veteran politicians and more 'opinion' candidates. Worth noting that the very high 'only for the list' vote has allowed the election of councillors with few preferential votes, like Saavedra, who with just 9.3k, has the fewest preferential votes of any councillor-elect.

The Pacto's result is very bad. It is similar to the combined 2019 result of the Polo and CH-UP list, and is down one seat from that (in reality no change because one Polo councillor joined Robledo's Dignidad in 2020). Just 376,000 votes, waaaaay down from the 800k+ the Pacto won in March 2022. The Pacto ran a closed list, whose makeup led to a nice bit of infighting and psychodrama, because it excluded some competent incumbents like Carlos Carrillo and Ati Quigua to favour a nepobaby (Rocio Dussán, daughter of Polo leader and Colpensiones director Jaime Dussán) and a dumb far-left 'influencer' famous for making a YouTube series about Uribe which is full of falsehoods (Daniel Mendoza, thankfully didn't get in). The closed list was led by incumbent councillor Heidy Sánchez, followed by Ana Teresa Bernal. Bulgarian-born Donka Atanassova Iakimova is the last candidate to get in.

A surprisingly and unexpectedly good result for uribismo which gains two seats and wins about 13%. The CD's strong results prove that, despite the party's weakness at the local level and unease on the hard-right about Álvaro Uribe's 'soft' opposition to Petro, the CD remains the dominant right-wing opposition party. The top candidate is Daniel Briceño (48.4k), a right-wing lawyer-turned-Twitter influencer who became very famous and popular on the right for denouncing presumed irregularities and clientelism in the Petro government, who should be reminded that a city councillor's job is not to be an opposition critic of the national government. Sandra Forero, the former president of the construction companies' association Camacol who was invited by Uribe to be the #1 candidate, won 32.7k. Other winners are: Diana Diago (incumbent councillor and self-proclaimed 'Uribe's councillor'), Óscar Ramírez Vahos (incumbent, very right-wing), Julián Uscátegui (brother of CD rep. José Jaime Uscátegui and son of retired general Jaime Humberto Uscátegui, responsible for complicity in the Mapiripán massacre in 1997), Humberto 'Papo' Amín (incumbent whose every tweet is 'PETRO BAD') and Andrés Barrios (candidate of CD senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, in 2016 promoted a failed referendum against same-sex adoption rights). Camilo Rubiano, the candidate supported by Iván Duque (lol), won just 4,600 votes (lol).

Not a great result for the Liberals who are down a seat. Samir Abisambra, who led the party's list, wins the most votes on it (52.5k). Clara Lucía Sandoval, a former two-term councillor and the candidate of the Castellanos' family evangelical church MCI (who have, in recent years, put their eggs with the CD, CR and now the Liberals), ranked third with 22,800 votes (as an evangelical Christian she is very right-wing and socially conservative, not at all liberal, but welcome to the Colombian Liberal Party). The other winners are incumbents or former incumbents. Glad to report that Venus Albeiro Silva, an opportunist old career politician who was expelled from the Polo in 2016 for supporting Peñalosa's policy agenda, was defeated (he lost in 2019 too, but later got in when Sara Castellanos ran for Senate in 2022).

The coalition of CR, La U and the MIRA didn't live up to potential, with their 8% a far cry from the 14% all three had won separately in 2019. CR is the biggest victim, reduced from 4 to 1 seat, only reelection Rolando González (CR two-term incumbent) with 29.8k votes. The MIRA takes two of the seats thanks to its disciplined vote, reelecting incumbent Fabián Puentes and electing Samir Bedoya Piraquive (nephew of María Luisa Piraquive, the owner/leader of the Church of God Ministry of Jesus Christ International). La U's sole incumbent Rubén Torrado takes the fourth seat. CR's prominent candidates including Miguel Santiago García, the brother of Cundinamarca governor Nicolás Garcia, and Juan Felipe Grillo, the candidate of CR senator David Luna, both defeated. A result that seals a bad election for CR in Bogotá, alongside General Vargas' very bad result. Very glad to report that the infamous former 'councillor of the family', the insane homophobe Marco Fidel Ramírez, has been badly beaten (just 5,200 votes). How will we find out how Frozen promotes deviant homosexual behaviour?

LARA is the list of well, Rodrigo Lara (LARA stands for Liderazgo Amplio de Renovación Avanzada, or 'Broad Leadership of Advanced Renewal'), and while Lara did poorly, LARA did surprisingly well and takes two seats - almost entirely due to the very unexpected huge result won by Edinson Julián 'Fuchi' Forero, leader of a group of motorcyclists who got popular for complaining about the poor state of roads and alleged abuses against motorcyclists by traffic agents. He won 69,200 votes, almost as much as Lara won in the mayoral race, and he becomes the single most voted council candidate. His big vote allowed the election of a second councillor for the list, bringing in Angelo Schiavenato, with just 11,000 votes, a young 'rich kid' lawyer who got famous last year for crashing his BMW into thieves who wanted to steal his BMW (and got the rare 'honour' of getting mentioned in English-language media, further proving that English-language media only mentions Colombia when it's a freak story).

Another coalition list gone bad is the Conservative-CJL coalition, reduced to just one seat while separately they had won 4 seats in 2019, although this is in part explainable by internal divisions in the Christian right party CJL and the retirement of one Conservative incumbent (whose structure went over to NL with her son, see above). The seat goes to CJL incumbent Marco Fidel Acosta, who won about 21,000 votes, against two-term Conservative incumbent Nelson Cubides, who won 14.7k.

The final list to win a seat is the 'Bogotá más fuerte' coalition list between the Gómez family's right-wing/far-right recently resucitated MSN and former president Andrés Pastrana's recently resucitated NFD. With 11,800 preferential votes, the seat goes to incumbent councillor (ex-CJL, now NFD) Emel Rojas, ahead of incumbent councillor and former senator (ex-CR, now NFD) Samuel Arrieta who got 9.7k votes. The latest Gómez family nepobaby, Nicolás Gómez (the great-grandson of former president Laureano Gómez and the son of current party leader Enrique Gómez Martínez) won only 5,700 votes.

Dignidad y Compromiso loses its only seat, with incumbent (ex-Polo) councillor Manuel Sarmiento, a Robledo loyalist, winning just 5,800 votes. Liliana Castañeda, a former student leader and the candidate of Dignidad rep. Jennifer Pedraza (one of the few very good representatives, imo), won just 4,100 votes. A bit sad to see them do so poorly but it's the natural end result of Robledo (and Fajardo)'s doomed vanity project.

Galán should start his term with a broad majority coalition with NL-EM, the Greens, the Liberals and probably CR-MIRA-La U (at the very minimum).

Eloquent congratulation post from acting mayor Claudia López. I should have been following this to understand better the political context, but ir's clear there's a strained relationship between the local and the national governments

https://twitter.com/ClaudiaLopez/status/1718754492101869927?t=V-k4JsFcuHgwW_zu2b...

Mask-off moment where she makes clear that she supported Galán and Oviedo (her wife, Angélica Lozano, publicly said as much), who were both more or less continuity candidates (Oviedo more so by a bit). Petro and López have been at war since 2019, except a brief truce from late 2021 to late 2022 during the elections, and the cause of the current conflict is Petro's obsession with the underground metro (as part of a longstanding vendetta against Peñalosa and his tendency to hold grudges forever), an issue which he has pushed regardless of what people say, even going behind her back to talk directly with the Chinese contractors (and recently with Xi in China), as I explain in my Substack post in greater detail. The plebiscite she refers to is Petro's latest nonsensical idea - to hold a plebiscite about the metro (underground or as is), and yesterday's results showed that ~80% of voters support building the metro as is (i.e. all candidates except for Bolívar opposed Petro's harebrained schemes to bury the metro).

[Jingizu]

I would like to thank Hash for his hard work not just on Colombia but on other countries as well!

[Hash]

Medellín council makeup

Creemos 25.6% - 7 seats (+7)
CD 18.6% - 5 seats (-3)
Conservative 7.3% - 2 seats (-1)
Liberal 5.6% - 1 seat (-1)
Greens 5.3% - 1 seat (-1)
Pacto 5.1% - 1 seat (+1)
CR-MIRA-La U 5% - 1 seat (-1)
ASI 4.4% - 1 seat (+1)
Independientes 3.8% - 2 seats (n/c), incl. Upegui ex officio (runner-up)
--
Renace 2.8% - 0 seats (n/c)
NL-CJL-NFD 1.2%
Medellín nos une 1%
MSN 0.7%
Gente en Movimiento 0.4%
Ecologista 0.3%
Pacto Decente 0.3%
Fuerza de la Paz 0.1%
Blank votes 12.3%

As was to be expected, Fico's (recently legally recognized) party Creemos won big on the coattails of Fico's victory and becomes the largest party. Creemos won a full 79.8k votes (or 9.2% of all valid votes) only for the logo/list (without any preferential vote expressed), which again is quite unusual and a sign a strong opinion vote (voting only for the party list itself as a whole doesn't help any single candidate and just boosts the party's overall vote total and therefore the seats it is entitled to). It is a much better performance than Creemos 1.0's performance back in 2015, when it won 7.8% and 2 seats (both ended up breaking with Fico as he shifted more explicitly to the right and ran for reelection on a centrist list in 2019). This year, Creemos' list was heavily made up of Fico loyalists and associates from his first term. The top candidate, winning 43,000 votes, more than any other candidate by far, is Andrés Tobón, Fico's former security secretary. María Paulina Suárez, a technocrat and Fico's former social inclusion secretary, was number 1 on the list and won 16k votes. The other winners are Santiago Perdomo (young lawyer who worked in Fico's administration, 15k), Alejandro de Bedout (former secretary of youth, 11.1k), Juan Carlos de la Cuesta (former president of the Atlético Nacional football team from 2012 to 2017, supported by the Los Del Sur supporters' club/barra brava, 9.4k), Santiago Narváez (candidate of Fico ally and former CD councillor Simón Molina, 9.2k) and Damian Pérez (9.2k).

The CD was quite anxious about the rise of Creemos eating into its electorate. On the one hand, they did lose 3 seats (if you include the opposition statute runner-up seat that went to Alfredo Ramos in 2019, -2 if you just include the 7 seats won by the list), and their vote fell from 22.7% to 18.6%. However, because of higher turnout and fewer blank votes, the CD only lost 7,000 votes compared to 2019, while Creemos won 223,400 votes. So while uribismo did suffer from the rise of Creemos, they still had a relatively decent showing. The party's top candidate is incumbent councillor Sebastián López, one of the leading opposition voices to Quintero in the past council (and nephew of prominent Antioquian uribista-conservative politician Fabio Valencia Cossio), who is rewarded by right-wing voters with 41,700 votes, up from just 8,800 in 2019. Acclaimed former organized crime prosecutor Claudia Carrasquilla (who led the arrest of Fico's security secretary Gustavo Villegas in 2017, and resigned from the Fiscalía in Feb. 2020 and later said she was fired for political reasons and pressures from the CD), who unsuccessfully ran for Senate for CR last year, won 14,600 votes. Luis Guillermo Vélez, a libertarian economist and columnist and personal friend of Álvaro Uribe who was given the number 1 spot on the list by Uribe (a decision which disconcerted and displeased uribista politicians), was elected with 9,600 votes. Andrés 'el Gury' Rodríguez, a right-wing activist who led the (failed) recall effort against Quintero, supported by far-right senator María Fernanda Cabal, won about 6,100 votes. The fifth seat, on preliminary precount results, seems to be for incumbent councillor (since 2022) Leticia Orrego (supported by Esteban Ramos, son of former governor Luis Alfredo Ramos, convicted for parapolítica) with 6,100 votes, about 500 votes ahead of Milton Vasco, the candidate of the 'Paolos' (the group of CD senator Paola Holguín).

The Conservatives lost one seat, and two incumbents were defeated. Incumbent councillor Juan Ramón Jiménez, an animal rights activist (whose campaign posters were, obviously, adorable pictures of animals), was reelected with the most votes on the list, 14,100. The party's second seat goes to Brisvani Arenas (9.5k), the candidate of the 'Unión Familia', a socially conservative Catholic group which unexpectedly elected one senator and one representative last year with strong support in Antioquia, winning socially conservative Catholic opinion votes. Quinterista Conservative incumbents Babinton Flórez (from the group of senator Germán Blanco) and Lucas Cañas (from the group of senator Carlos Andrés Trujillo, a Petro ally, who had a 'quota' in the outgoing Quintero administration with the environment secretary) were both defeated, winning 8,000 and 7,200 votes respectively. Behind them, the two candidates from Juan Diego Gómez's faction, former councillors John Jaime de Jesús Moncada and Carlos Alberto Zuluaga, were also defeated with 6,000 and 5,800 votes respectively.

The Liberals suffered a pretty big hit, losing one seat and their votes falling from 66,800 in 2019 to 48,700 this year. Quite surprisingly, the leading candidate on the list is Farley Macías, a young community leader in a low-income comuna whose ideological causes (per his website) are 'fight against aporophobia, fight against anomie' (his website also claims he has a 100% capabilities in 'community leadership', 94% capability in problem resolution, 96% capability in critical thinking etc,), who won 10,300 votes, finishing about 500 votes ahead of incumbent five-term councillor/president of the council Fabio Rivera, a leading Liberal political leader in Medellín and ally of Julián Bedoya (and a leading Quintero ally on the outgoing council). Rivera is said to be fighting to regain his seat in the ongoing 'escrutinio'. Incumbent councillor Carlos Mario 'el Flaco' Mejía (from the group of Eugenio Prieto, ex-Quintero ally), who got into council only in July after a court order removed Aura Marleny Arcila from her seat, won 7,700 votes. Liliana Parra, the candidate backed by former councillor Aura Marleny Arcila (of the Universidad de Medellín faction), won 5,500 votes.

The Greens lost about 1% from 2019 and have been reduced to one seat. The party has been split between quinteristas ('left-leaning') and centrist anti-quinteristas. Alejandro Arias García, Quintero's former secretary of economic development (2020-22), won the seat with 4,800 votes, about 400 votes ahead of incumbent quinterista councillor Jaime Cuartas (who had 'quotas' in the Quintero administration).

The Pacto did relatively 'well', if compared to 2019, winning 5% and 44,000 votes. The top candidate on the closed list was José Luis Marín 'AquinoTicias', an activist who became famous as a satirical journalist covering protests in 2020 and 2021 with a metal ladle.

The CR-MIRA-La U list did quite poorly, losing about 29,000 votes from the combined totals of the CR-MIRA and La U's separate lists in 2019. The sole seat they obtained went to Miguel Ángel Iguaran (CR), the husband of renegade ex-CD councillor Nataly Vélez (she was the single most voted candidate for council in 2019 with 20,000 votes and one of four uribistas in council who disobeyed the party's decision to be in opposition to Quintero), who won 10,000 votes (so half of what his wife won in 2019). MIRA incumbent councillor Juan Felipe Betancur, who was part of Quintero's coalition in council, was defeated, with 8,000 votes. La U's former four-term councillor (2003-2019) Jesús Aníbal Echeverry failed in his attempt to regain his old job, winning just 7,000 votes.

The ASI won 4.4% and one seat. The seat will be held by Janeth Hurtado Betancur, a community leader from the rural corregimiento of San Antonio de Prado, who probably won most of her 5,900 votes there. Quinterista Mateo Jiménez Alzate, a troubadour, was the second ranking candidate with 4,500 votes.

It was a real disaster for Quintero's party Independientes - their list won just 33,500 votes or 3.8%, a result nearly halved compared to 2019 (62,400 with over 8% and 2 seats). They won just one seat outright (the second will be held by Upegui as the opposition statute runner-up seat). Somewhat surprisingly, it appears as if the seat will go to Carlos Alberto Gutierrez, subsecretary of local governance, who won 3,100 votes, ahead of incumbent councillor Carlos 'el Mocho' Romero, who won 2,600 votes (Romero became councillor in 2021, replacing the godawful Álex Flórez, who was elected to the Senate on the Pacto list in 2022) and of the number 1 candidate on the list, Ana María Valle, former secretary of woman and close associate of Upegui and Quintero's wife Diana Osorio, who won just 2,300 votes.

Falling short of seats, the Renace coalition (Dignidad y Compromise, Verde Oxígeno and En Marcha) was the fajardista centrist list. It won just 24,700 votes, or 2.8%. Esteban Jaramillo, a fajardista and former political staffer to former Green fajardista senator Iván Marulanda, was the number one candidate and won 4,000 votes.

Medellín nos une was the list of mayoral candidate Albert Corredor whose top candidate was fellow renegage ex-uribista councillor Lina García Gañán. The closed list won less than 9,000 votes.

Worth noting the inglorious demise of the feminist movement which was the big phenomenon of 2019 in Medellín. The movement Estamos Listas won 28,000 votes and 3.8%, electing one councillor, but the movement failed to recover from its failed attempt to go national by running a Senate list in 2022, and succumbed to internal division. A faction that wished to continue in elected politics, Electas, allied with the new Partido Ecologista. The party's closed list won just 2,800 votes.

[Hash]

I've finished my (first) results analysis post, with general conclusions rather than a deep dive into specific results. Includes lots of numbers too. Please read it here.

I won't restate what I've written there now, but I may expand a bit more on certain things in some later posts on here (or not, I'm going on vacation soon).

In general news of sorts:

Despite almost everyone agreeing that the results were bad for the Pacto, even if not everyone may agree that this means the elections were a referendum against Petro, there hasn't been much self-criticism or soul-searching coming from the Pacto at all, with the notable exception of Gustavo Bolívar, who, for all his faults, is honest and straightforward (no langue de bois to use a French term). First and foremost, Petro spent much of last week tweeting spin on results to argue that, actually, they were very good. Petro based his argument by considering all political forces he considers part of his 'governing coalition'/those who supported him in the first round in 2022 (i.e. not just the Pacto but also friendly Liberals, Conservatives, Greens and the various 'satellite' parties around the Pacto), and concluded that they had won 15 governorships (plus 6 'independents close to the government'), tweeting out this map

https://twitter.com/petrogustavo/status/1720154006536745051/photo/1
While this is a lot of spin, cope and creative accounting from Petro, he's not entirely wrong: a few of the Liberal and Green governors elected are sympathetic to the government and/or were supported by those pro-government representatives (mostly the Liberal 'rebels' that are in conflict with Cesar Gaviria) Petro is dependent upon in the House. The nature of local elections plus the current exploded party landscape and the amount of coalitions allows for a battle of conflicting narratives where everyone can claim to have won, without being entirely wrong.

In a sign of a future tense relation with some governors, Petro has met first with the 15 governors he considers 'on his side' and will meet with the rest later, and he turned down an invitation to attend the closing of an event of the National Federation of Departments (FND), which was criticized by a few of the outgoing governors who've been more anti-Petro. At the same time, though, the government has tried to ease tension and other administration officials have met with the other governors-elect.

Meanwhile, Antioquia's new uribista governor-elect, Andrés Julián Rendón, has proposed holding a referendum on fiscal autonomy for departments (he wants only departments to levy individual and corporate income tax) so that "taxes paid by companies and citizens stay in the places they originate". Such a referendum has little chance of being held, and some legal experts say it would be unconstitutional, but that's all besides the point: the intention of this is to position himself politically and make his voice heard against the national government, which is accused of defunding/underfunding infrastructure projects in Antioquia. It's also red meat for the right-wing antioqueño electorate, which has rediscovered its regionalist identity since Petro's election and started talking about federalism more intensely, yelling at the top of their lungs 'Antioquia Federal' (a right-wing meme phrase). Colombia could do with a discussion about fiscal decentralization and the revenue-raising capacities of subnational governments but this isn't happening (for one, it'd require serious adults).

Colombia is kind of like France in that politicians regularly propose to hold a referendum on topic x, but few referendums are ever actually held (and Colombia has a much simpler citizen-initiated referendum procedure than France). The latest is (outgoing) Attorney General Francisco Barbosa's idea to hold a plebiscite on the government's peace policy. This nonsensical idea also has no chance of happening and it's slightly concerning that Barbosa doesn't seem to know that only the president can call a plebiscite (subject to approval by Congress), but Barbosa is a worthless and incompetent but very narcisstic and vain attorney general who now sees himself as president in 2026. Barbosa is Iván Duque's old university classmate and since Petro's election has behaved more as an opposition politician than attorney general, criticizing the government at every turn under the pretense of 'checks and balances' even though 'checks and balances' didn't apply when the president was his old buddy. Barbosa thinks ideas like this will endear him to right-wingers, but I doubt he'll go very far in his presidential ambitions. A lot of previous AGs have had presidential delusions but none of them went very far.

Undeterred by recent results, former mayor of Medellín Daniel Quintero has announced his 2026 presidential candidacy, very early but still to no one's surprise. He's done this to distract from recent corruption indictments announced by Barbosa against seven former officials in his administration, with Quintero saying that Barbosa should resign like he did if he's started his presidential campaign. Quintero would be one of the left's main candidates for 2026, although Quintero is an opportunist first and foremost, and his current alliance of sorts with the Pacto is purely strategic and out of convenience, and he's transparently using the Pacto to benefit his own political project. He's already gotten into a Twitter fight with Gustavo Bolívar, calling him a toxic leader who has alienated 'independents' like him who came to support Petro in 2022. I assume Quintero's early presidential campaign puts an end to rumours that he'd be appointed to cabinet in the next shuffle (which has been 'imminent' for months according to the media 'exclusives').

Quintero isn't even the first declared 2026 candidate: far-right uribista senator María Fernanda Cabal, who wants to join the Trump-Bolsonaro-Abascal-Meloni-Orban etc. kewl kids klub so much, announced her candidacy in September, and some deranged uribista grandmother/Twitter personality Alicia Franco has also said she's running (lol).

In the real world, Petro's total peace policy is falling apart: the Estado Mayor Central (EMC) FARC dissident group led by 'Iván Mordisco' has unilaterally suspended the peace negotiations with the government after tensions between them and the military in El Plateado (Cauca), and the talks with the ELN are in crisis following the kidnapping and delayed release of Liverpool footballer Luis Díaz's father by the ELN (the day before the elections, his mother was also kidnapped but soon freed but his father was only released on November 9 after the ELN deliberately took its sweet time). These crises have further highlighted how flawed and disorganized Petro's total peace policy is, with the end result being that illegal armed groups have taken advantage of the government's good intentions and taken Petro and everyone for a ride, raising questions about their actual willingness for peace. The government has set no 'red lines' in these negotiations and it has just exploded in their face: very timidly, the government has now said that the ELN must end kidnappings and release hostages but still without making this a sine qua non (in contrast, Santos suspended the peace negotiations with the FARC in November 2014 following the kidnapping of a general, and in general always made clear that he had a stick in his other hand). The ELN has shown no interest in stopping its practice of kidnapping, and with the current government allowing them to behave impudently as they do, they have no real reason to do so. I also think the government has spent too much energy in negotiating bilateral ceasefires with groups, which then become the main focus of the peace talks and risks derailing them whenever there's a crisis (like is happening now) - again, Santos largely avoided wasting capital on short-term ceasefires, at some political cost to him (unlike Pastrana during the Caguán fiasco). The peace commissioner, Danilo Rueda, is also, at best, way out of his depth and has largely improvised as he goes along, with little to no coordination with other government departments, like the defence ministry (!). In sum, it's quite obvious that the peace talks are going nowhere, both because the government has no clear idea of where it wants them to go and because the armed groups are taking advantage of this to blackmail the government and build up their strength. Petro doesn't seem to be too interested by all this, and hasn't really signalled a change in direction, besides a tweet that a ceasefire without negotiations is impossible (in the case of the EMC-FARC).

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Results by locality in Bogotá



Maps





Galán wins every locality except for the leftist Sumapaz (which cast all of 3,300 votes), with over 40% everywhere except Sumapaz. Galán had pretty strong support among all social classes--he got over 40% in Bosa, Ciudad Bolívar and Usme--but did best with wealthiest areas, with 60% in Usaquén and 56.8% in Chapinero (and over 70% in the wealthiest polling locations in those places). Elections in Bogotá are won in the very populated, working-class and lower middle-class (strata 2 and 3) swing localities of Kennedy and Engativá (as well as Suba which has wealthier areas), and Galán won them 46.5% and 48.1% (and 53.3% in Suba).

Oviedo's support is similar to that of the Greens and López in 2019, although weaker than she was in lower-income localities in the south. He has a predominantly middle-class vote, weak in low-income areas (he won 14-15% in Usme and Cd. Bolívar, the poorest localities, although he did win 18.5% in Bosa, where he famously moved to help shake off his preppy rich kid gomelo image), strongest in middle-class and upper middle-class localities (like Fontibón, Teusaquillo, parts of Chapinero and Engativá) and falling off a bit in the wealthiest areas (he won 22% in Usaquén but weaker in the wealthiest polling locations).

Bolívar's support was, as usual, concentrated in the poor south as well as historical Candelaria (28.8%). He won 26% in Usme and 24.8% in Cd. Bolívar in the south, and was unsurprisingly very weak in the wealthiest localities of Usaquén (9.3%) and Chapinero (11.8%). Compared to Petro in 2022, he had huge losses in the left's low-income strongholds in the south (Petro, in R1, got 65% in Usme, 62.7% in Cd. Bolívar, 62% in San Cristobal, 59.6% in Santa Fe, 61% in Bosa, 50.5% in Kennedy...). Some of the left's lost votes went to blank vote (which always does best in lower-income areas), which was higher than in 2019 in the low-income south (over 7%).

The map of the race for second between Oviedo and Bolívar shows a pretty classic north-south divide, with Bolívar ahead of Oviedo in the poorest parts of the city and Oviedo ahead of him elsewhere, including (quite crucially) in Kennedy (by a few decimal points) and Engativá (by a bigger margin).

The other candidates are quite irrelevant but Lara clearly did better in lower-income areas.

There's some more detailed maps and analysis on this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/SLondono00/status/1720581819421036923, including some interesting estimates of votes by socioeconomic strata (this is a rough estimate presumably based on the dominant SES at the polling location level).




Results in Medellín by comuna (yawn)





Fico wins by landslides everywhere and is above 60% everywhere, while Upegui is below 15% everywhere except Comuna 2. Fico does best in the wealthiest areas (largely located in the south), winning nearly 90% (!) in very wealthy El Poblado and about 79% in Laureles-Estadio and Belén.

[jimros]

What makes Sumapaz so progressive?

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What makes Sumapaz so progressive?

The broader region of Sumapaz - which includes the province of Sumapaz in Cundinamarca as well as the locality of Sumapaz (Alto Sumapaz) - has a long history of agrarian conflicts going back to the late nineteenth century. A left-wing oriented agrarian movement grew beginning in the late 1920s in the wake of land ownership conflicts between landowners (or more accurately, landowner, as in a single family which owned a huge hacienda), settlers and tenant farmers. This is one of the most famous and important agrarian movements in 20th century Colombian history, and produced two of the most famous agrarian leaders in this era - Erasmo Valencia and Juan de la Cruz Varela (who joined the Communist Party in the 1950s). The settlers' goals were partially recognized with the allocation of vacant lands and division of large estates under the reformist Liberal governments of the 1930s, but this process was interrupted by La Violencia after 1946/1949. Peasants and agrarian leaders like Juan de la Cruz Varela formed liberal and communist guerrillas to defend against Conservative oppression and persecution, and then against Gustavo Rojas Pinilla's attacks on communist guerrillas in Villarrica (Tolima). The Alto Sumapaz (the remote and inhospitable páramo) became a holdout of communist guerrillas in the 1950s and refuge for those displaced by the conflict in Tolima (Varela's communist guerrilla accepted Rojas' amnesty in late 1953 without surrendering their weapons and later escaped to the Alto Sumapaz after the 'war of Villarrica, before finally demobilizing as part of the peace process in 1957-58, which allowed Varela to be elected to the House in 1960 as an alternate in alliance with López Michelsen's dissident Liberal anti-frentenacionalista MRL). From this legacy of agrarian conflicts, agrarian/peasant (campesino) social movements and community organizations have remained quite strong in Sumapaz.

Because of its strategic geographic location at a crossroads connecting Bogotá and Cundinamarca with Meta, Huila and Tolima, the Sumapaz was an important region and rear-base for the FARC, particularly after the 1980s and during the 1990s. The FARC came to be quasi-dominant in the Alto Sumapaz, imposing its social order and regulating social and political life as a parallel state. The FARC's presence in the region was seriously weakened from the early 2000s through military operations and a stronger military presence.

Because of the guerrilla's presence, its political history and its political leanings, the inhabitants of the locality and broader region have long been stigmatized as 'guerrilla sympathizers' and were victims of the 'dirty war' against alleged 'leftists' or 'guerrilla sympathizers' waged by the paramilitaries, (sectors of) the state and certain political elites, targeting left-wing politicians, social movements and community organizations.

Since the 1990s, local community organizations and organized labour pushed for the creation of a Zona de Reserva Campesina (ZRC) in the locality of Sumapaz -- ZRC were created by a 1994 law and are intended to support and protect peasant economy and guarantee the rights of campesinos, primarily in settlement/colonization regions and where vacant lands predominate. The implementation of these areas has been very complicated across Colombia (prior to 2022, only seven had been legally created and approved by the government), and staunchly opposed by the uribista right, which has long (falsely) claimed that ZRC are 'emporiums of terrorism' which moreover limit agroindustrial development. The left has, in contrast, strongly supported ZRCs, which they see as a way to protect the small peasant economies against big landowners, agroindustrialists and illegal land grabbing, as well as protect the environment and limit the expansion of the agricultural boundary.

After being blocked by Uribe and Duque's administration, and with the Santos administration unable to have it created before leaving office, the land authority finally created the Sumapaz ZRC (along with three others) in December 2022, following court orders.

During a debate in this campaign, Diego Molano, the most right-wing mayoral candidate, said that ZRC had been 'instrumentalized' by the FARC to 'manipulate' peasants. The other candidates all supported the Sumapaz ZRC, with Galán saying that ZRC could not be stigmatized and pledging to work with peasants of Sumapaz to protect the páramo.

The locality of Sumapaz makes up about 47% of Bogotá's total land area and is by far the largest locality, but also is the least populated, with only 0.05% or so of the city's population. It is largely covered by the Sumapaz páramo, the largest páramo ecosystem in the world, and by the Sumapaz national park.

There are several articles online, in Spanish, which talk in more detail about the Sumapaz's history of land conflicts:

-Territorio rural, violencia y resistencia en Sumapaz, Colombia
-El conflicto interno y su impacto en las luchas por la tierra en Colombia: el caso de Sumapaz

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Finally was able to get around to making a map of the mayoral results in Cali by comuna, probably the most interesting map of the 3 big cities:





There's a very clear class pattern here, as expected: Eder absolutely dominates in the wealthiest comunas of Cali - comuna 2, 17, 19 and 22, with 62.7%, 63.1%, 59.5% and 79.3% respectively, trouncing Ortíz by over 40 points. Comuna 22 in the very far south of Cali is the city's wealthiest comuna, predominantly made up of strata 6 private villas and gated communities, famous for its very right-wing politics and racist vigilante actions by armed residents LARPing as paracos during the 2021 protests (esteemed resident and gun-wielding madman Andrés Escobar was elected city councillor in Cali this year with the CD; he endorsed Eder but Eder rejected his support). However, Eder also won lower middle-class areas (strata 3), the key to victories in Colombian local elections, winning 46% in predominantly strata 3 comuna 5, 44% in comuna 10, 38% in comuna 8, 39% in comuna 4 and 42% in comuna 9 (which includes some pretty run-down, low-income 'inner city' areas). He also won 48.8% in comuna 3, which includes the downtown and historic centre of Cali as well as some wealthier areas and some lower middle-class neighbourhoods.

On the other hand 'el Chontico' Ortíz won the poorer areas of Cali - the east of the city (Aguablanca) and the peripheral informal settlements (comunas 1 and 20 - which includes Siloé - and parts of 18), incidentally the same areas which voted for Petro by huge margins in 2022. He won over 40% in comunas 12 and 13, and close to it in comunas 14 and 21. Eder won just 22.9% in comuna 14 and 23.3% in comuna 21, both in the district of Aguablanca. On the other hand, Ortíz won less than 20% in comunas 2, 17, 19 and 22.

Those low-income areas of Cali are also where the Pacto's candidate, Rentería, did best, although his support was very evenly distributed outside of the wealthiest comunas - he won between 11% and 13% in 18 of the 22 comunas, his best result being 13.6-13.7% in comuna 14 and 21 -- in comparison, Petro had won over 64.8% and 67.6% in those comunas in the first round in 2022...

The results are quite similar to 2015, an election also won by a centre-right but somewhat 'progressive' businessman (Maurice Armitage) against 'el Chontico', though Eder is even stronger in the wealthiest comunas but somewhat weaker in the poorest parts of the city (2015 had a strong third candidate in Angelino Garzón).

[Hash]

Two local referendums today:

In Manizales and surrounding municipalities of Centro Sur Caldas (Manizales, Villamaria, Neira, Palestina, Chinchiná), a referendum on the creation of a Metropolitan Area was held. There are six legally recognized metropolitan areas in Colombia, and the main purpose of metropolitan areas is to allow for harmonized coordination and joint planning between municipalities linked to one another by certain ties, notably on issues of common interest to the entire metropolitan area like public transportation, environment, provision of public services and infrastructure projects of metropolitan interest.

This referendum was supposed to be held in 2020 but was delayed because of the pandemic, and was finally held today. It was supported by the governor of Caldas, the mayor of Manizales and most of the department's political establishment. It was opposed by parts of the left, in part for reasons related to the referendum itself, complaining that the campaign was too short and the No campaign did not compete under equal conditions and couldn't campaign properly. The outgoing and incoming mayors of Chinchiná also opposed the metropolitan area, fearing a loss of municipal autonomy and domination by Manizales. Chinchiná in the past tried to join the metropolitan area of Pereira (Risaralda).

Overall, turnout was 15.4% and 85.6% voted yes. The yes vote won in Manizales (94.9%), Villamaria (91.7%), Neira (81.4%) and Palestina (79.9%), and the no vote won in Chinchiná (71.7%). The turnout threshold was lowered from 25% to 5% by a law in 2019, so this means that turnout was above the threshold in all municipalities. Being approved by four municipalities, the metropolitan area of Centro Sur de Caldas will be officially created with these four municipalities (Manizales, Villamaria, Neira and Palestina).

In Chocó, inhabitants of Belén de Bajirá approved the creation of the new municipality of Nuevo Belén de Bajirá, separating from Riosucio, with 99.3% in favour (3141 yes against 11 no) and 35.2% turnout, well above the 25% turnout threshold. This is the final dénouement in the long minor saga of Belén de Bajirá, the subject of a boundary dispute between Chocó and Antioquia. In 2000, Antioquia challenged the creation of the municipality of Belén de Bajirá by Chocó and the Council of State sided with Antioquia in 2007, ruling that the settlement had been a corregimiento of Mutatá (Antioquia) since 1975 but didn't resolve the dispute. In 2016, the geographical institute (IGAC) presented a technical study which found that Belén de Bajirá belonged to Chocó on the basis of the 1947 law which created the department. The congressional commissions for territorial organization said that they were not competent under the law to resolve the territorial dispute, and in 2017 the IGAC published the official maps which placed Belén de Bajirá in Chocó. In August 2018, the Council of State denied Antioquia's request to suspend the IGAC's decision, placing Belén de Bajirá in Chocó. In 2022, the Chocó's departmental assembly created the new municipality of Nuevo Belén de Bajirá.

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This week, somewhat in extremis, the government managed to get the healthcare reform passed in second debate in the House. The final vote was 87 to 37, with most of the opposition deliberately leaving the chamber as they've always done in a sign of protest. Perhaps even more importantly for the government, on the two statutory articles whose adoption required an absolute majority (94) rather than a simple majority, they were adopted with 99 votes in favour. As with every vote on this bill, the government's majority was made up of the Pacto + left-wing satellite allies (Comunes etc.), most of the victims' seats, the bulk of the Liberals, a majority of La U and about half of the Greens.

This was a very hard fought victory - debate in the plenary of the House began in the previous legislative year, in June, and has taken up much of the time since the current session began in July. The bill was originally presented in early March, and passed in commission in May. The government at times had difficult controlling the process, and the opposition was able to take advantage and delaying debate by breaking quorum. Since late November, the government regained solid control and was able to quickly get the remaining articles passed, including all the controversial (and critical) ones.

This has come at a *huge* political cost for the government: the coalition exploded in late April, health minister Carolina Corcho was sacrificed, it consumed most of the government's political capital and has come at the expense of the two other major social reforms it presented earlier this year (labour and pensions). For Petro, this reform, above all others, has become a point of honour and he has refused to listen to critics and opponents.

The left celebrated the passage in second debate as if it was a huge victory, when in reality the difficult part is yet to come: the government's numbers are much better in the House and its majorities (if they exist) are uncertain in the Senate (case in point, the government has largely avoided having any major bills before the Senate this session). While the reform has good chances of (eventually) passing third debate in the seventh commission of the Senate, which is presided by a Pacto senator, it may not pass the fourth and final debate in the plenary (the Liberals and La U in the Senate are far less pro-Petro than their colleagues in the House). Even if it does, its opponents are quite certain that it would be quashed by the Constitutional Court for any number of procedural and legalese reasons--to which Petro has already said he'd present it again as many times as necessary.

The debate in the Senate will begin in February, when the new session starts, and the reform must be adopted by June 20. This calendar seems very tight.

Health minister Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo has not been doing himself any favours recently: after alienating the Greens by blackmailing them (thankfully for him the Greens can't agree on anything and are kind of masochist), he made bizarre quasi-antivaxx comments about COVID-19 vaccines and now has gone on a very strange rant that expanding ICUs during the pandemic was actually a 'business' (presumably because "ackshually people surviving COVID in an ICU is bad because Duque built the ICU"). Jaramillo has very quickly been burning his reputation as a reasonable, pragmatic experienced politician.

For more details and other news, please read my latest post on my Substack page here.

[MaxQue]

How Constitutionnal Court Justices are appointed? They seem to be huge neo-liberal hacks.

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How Constitutionnal Court Justices are appointed? They seem to be huge neo-liberal hacks.

The ConCourt has nine magistrates, elected by the Senate for individual eight-year term from shortlists of three candidates presented by the Council of State (filling 3 seats), the Supreme Court (3 seats) and the President (3 seats). The terms are individual and staggered. The current court has six liberal/liberal-leaning magistrates and three conservatives.

To claim that the ConCourt are "huge neoliberal hacks" is an extremely simplistic and ideologically blindered view which completely ignores the importance of the ConCourt, over the past decades, in protecting individual and fundamental rights, personal liberties, democratic checks and balances, the rule of law and special attention paid to protecting the rights of disadvantaged and vulnerable groups (they have even put together an entire document, in English, of their key sentences on this). Indeed, in the literature, the Colombian ConCourt has widely been described as an example of 'progressive judicial activism' and as one of the most activist courts (along with South Africa's Constitutional Court) in terms of protection of fundamental rights and freedoms, particularly for minorities.

Among other things, the Constitutional Court has brought attention to key issues like the rights of internally displaced persons, the fundamental right to healthcare or, more recently, the humanitarian crisis in La Guajira, forcing politicians and governments to at least pay some attention to issues that had been ignored in the political debate and by Congress. The Court has also made some important decisions on 'third-generation rights' like environmental rights (in 2016, it recognized a river as a subject of rights). On some other matters, the Court has tended to be more reticent to impose a decision and has often thrown the ball back to Congress--this is what it originally did on same-sex marriage--which is not a particularly great solution given the typical nature of Congress.

I'm not a legal expert, and I know less about the Court's decision on economic issues compared to other topics, but the Court has tended to apply a lax standard of review on matters exclusively economic in nature, giving the legislator a large degree of control, while evaluating economic policies in light of the objectives enshrined in the constitution. In the past, the Court was criticized by some who argued that its decisions created a high degree of legal instability on economic issues and that its decisions imposed additional public expenditures and ignored the fiscal costs of its decisions, particularly the Court's decisions on tutelas (injunctions for the protection of fundamental rights) which generate economic costs to the state.

It's clear that the current Court is not the progressive activist courts of the late 1990s or early 2000s, and that it has likely shifted somewhat to the right, particularly on economic issues, becoming less keen on interventionism, over the past 5+ years. In 2018, for example, it shifted its jurisprudence on mining in a direction which favoured mining companies' interests, after a series of decision a few years before which went against business interests. On the recent decision on the non-deductibility of royalties, a lot of people have disagreed with it (the most convincing criticism is from Rodrigo Uprimny again) but this doesn't mean, as Petro believes, that the Court is aligned with business interests. On Petro's state of emergency in La Guajira, the real legal issues are less economic and the Court's decision was broadly the right one although we can quibble on the exact forms it took. At the same time, the current Court has also, for example, ruled that the right to disconnect from work is a human right for all workers, as part of the rights to work in fair and decent conditions, to rest, free time, conciliation of work and family life, health and privacy. The Court has also continued to largely side with employees in tutelas (it recently sided with a woman diagnosed with endometriosis who was fired from her job after asking for unpaid leave to recover from surgery).

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I've written my latest Substack post here and I've also written a more detailed post about the debates to legalize recreational marijuana in the wake of the Senate, two weeks ago, again rejecting a proposal to legalize weed and a big overwrought brouhaha about Petro repealing a Duque-era decree that had allowed cops to fine and seize possession of small amounts of drugs (which has been decriminalized for personal use since 1994).

2023 was not a very good year at all for Petro. Almost an annus horribilis. His policy agenda ran aground in Congress and he got very little passed, and the big reforms are very tortuously grinding through at huge cost with no guarantees of success at the end (healthcare), very delayed (pension, labour) or shelved indefinitely. His congressional majority exploded - he pulled the plug before they did it, but the writing was on the wall and was precipitated by the government's handling of the three big reforms - which has left him with uncertain, unstable majorities in Congress, in a sort of precarious 'minority government' situation. Petro's various attempts at mobilizing his popular base or 'the streets' in his favour, in attempts to stage a show of strength and strong popular support, have largely failed and he seems to have abandoned the idea for now, while not dropping the populist rhetoric to defend himself. Over half of the original cabinet has been dismissed, including nearly all of the 'liberal technocrats' faction, and Petro is still regularly threatening his ministers with another shuffle (which the media has regularly claimed is 'imminent' for months now but has yet to happen) and is unhappy with several of them. His most trusted confidant (Laura Sarabia) and his eldest son were both hit by very explosive scandals carrying with them a strong stench of corruption, unholy alliances, dirty tricks, dirty money and abuse of power that really contradict the 'government of change' label. The 'total peace' has had some successes, but has largely devolved into total chaos (as I've written recently), and while not all security indicators are bad, several of them are and the general perception is that crime has increased and that violence/conflict has worsened in several areas of the country and hardly improved anywhere, with total peace losing credibility and public support in the process. The Pacto did poorly in the local and regional elections. The old adage that Petro is a good speaker but terrible at implementing his ideas and running an administration has been proven true many times over this year.

2024 will be Petro's last real chance to implement his promises and policy agenda, and to build his legacy, because 2025 will already be a pre-electoral year where it will be more difficult to launch any new initiatives. It's going to be a difficult year for Petro.

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New Substack post here about the main political news so far in 2024.

The start of the year has not been good for Petro. Barranquilla will likely lose the hosting rights for the 2027 Pan Am Games, largely because of an entirely avoidable screw-up by the government (specifically the hapless sports minister) which couldn't pay the $8 million in sponsorship and broadcasting rights to Panam Sports in time (after several extensions), even though everything suggests that the money had been appropriated. A perfect encapsulation of this government's very basic incompetence and inability to manage the basic, regular business of a state - unless it was on purpose (a petrista sabotage of an event they find too costly and political retribution against the Char clan of Barranquilla), but with Petro it's better to assume incompetence. Led by Petro, the government (and Char) are fighting hard to rescue it, although it is likely too late (other Latin American cities are officially bidding or considering it). The sports minister, Astrid Rodríguez, will obviously be fired soon (if she isn't, Congress will vote to remove her, which no government has ever let happen), once Petro decides who will replace her (if he hands the ministry as a political quota to someone in exchange for more governability).

While the government can't be bothered to pay for an international sporting event on time, the ambitious and politically influential first lady, Veronica Alcocer, is costing a lot of money has her whole entourage (stylist, photographer, advisor, friend) gets paid high salaries by three different government entities. In addition, the government spent over $1.2 million for a 'Colombia House' (to promote tourism and foreign investment) for 5 days during the WEF in Davos (for all his leftist grandstanding, Petro sure does love going to Davos). In additional news, disgraceful Petro sycophant Hollman Morris, who is now deputy manager for the public broadcaster RTVC, now faces accusations of workplace harassment from two women, directors of two public TV stations (the case against him for sexual harassment and conjugal violence, following accusations from his ex-wife and other women in 2019, was closed by the useless Fiscalía in 2023), and feminist icon Petro has once again swooped in to his rescue, bringing him along to Davos.

The new mayors and governors (and the councils and assemblies) took office on January 1. The first 100 days or first few months of local administrations do tend to set the tone for their administrations and define the sort of relations they'll have with the national government until 2026. Bogotá mayor Carlos Fernando Galán is keeping his conciliatory, non-confrontational and 'constructive' tone from the campaign, with his vow being to 'build on what has been built', including but not limited to building the metro as currently planned (as opposed to Petro's obsession to stop everything so that his preferred plan, a partially underground line, is built instead). While Galán is not, so far, looking like he wants to pick fights with Petro like Claudia López did, Petro doesn't seem to be favourably predisposed towards Galán. Galán's new cabinet is largely made up of his people and technocrats (who worked under Peñalosa, Duque, Claudia López, a few even under Petro) with few politicians. He has a large majority in council made up of Nuevo Liberalismo-En Marcha, Greens, Liberals, CR, CD, La U and the Christians, around 30ish out of 45 seats.

Medellín mayor (again) Fico Gutiérrez, along with his new BFF Antioquia governor Andrés Julián Rendón, are positioning themselves as the leaders of the opposition to Petro 'from the regions' (Fico will also work to undermine and destroy the presidential candidacy of his predecessor, Daniel Quintero). Fico's bombastic, theatrical hardline security policy is also back (now complete with a moralizing tone against recreational drug use).

Cali mayor Alejandro Eder promises peace, reconciliation and healing wounds (from his catastrophic predecessor, petrista Green Jorge Iván Ospina, and from the trauma of the 2021 protests) but also 'restoring order and authority' to a rather chaotic city which has a lot of major problems and issues. He doesn't seek problems with Petro, but he is backed by a lot of right-wingers thirsty for revenge on the left after Ospina/2021.

Barranquilla mayor Alex Char mk3, beginning the fifth consecutive term for charismo in La Arenosa, is very familiar. Besides a new focus on security, he promises more of the big infrastructure projects that have been the symbols of charismo in Barranquilla. But the city, from years of charista mega-projects and rather profligate spending, is now deeply indebted and questions the long-term financial sustainability of charismo's 'miracle'.

If people have any comments or suggestions regarding topics about Colombian politics that I could cover on my Substack, I'd be happy to hear them out.

[MRCVzla]

The other major political news in Colombia right now, the controversial leftist Senator Piedad Córdoba has passed away by a heart attack at the age of 68 in Medellín. The rulling Pacto Histórico has just designated fomer Cauca governor candidate Ferney Silva to occupate Córdoba's seat.

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The other major political news in Colombia right now, the controversial leftist Senator Piedad Córdoba has passed away by a heart attack at the age of 68 in Medellín. The rulling Pacto Histórico has just designated fomer Cauca governor candidate Ferney Silva to occupate Córdoba's seat.

At risk of sounding trite, she was a complicated figure. Daniel Coronell's column today concluded saying that "Piedad Córdoba was not the monster that her detractors paint her as, nor the angel that her defenders claim," which I feel is one of the better commentaries I've seen on her in the past day. She was a leading figure of the Colombian and Latin American left in the 2000s, somebody who believed in peace--risking her own life--and was a voice for causes which were, at the time, marginalized on the political scene, including ethnic minority rights, women's rights and LGBT+ right. She also worked towards the release of hostages held by the FARC, although her behaviour and the extent and nature of her ties and relations with the former guerrilla is unclear and the subject of controversy, revived by allegations made against her in 2022.

At the same time, she did benefit from her ties to the Chávez regime and to Álex Saab. She repeatedly appeared to justify the FARC's armed struggle and the 'right to rebellion and subversion', sometimes on the verge of justifying the FARC's criminal/terrorist actions, and at the same time, during the Uribe administration, she vilified the Colombian government internationally as a narco-paramilitary state and, infamously, called on Latin American left-wing governments to break diplomatic relations with Uribe's Colombia. Her open praise of Chávez, her close ties to the Venezuelan regime and her cordial contacts with the FARC in the mid-2000s (at the height of the Uribe democratic security era) earned her the undying hatred of the right (many of whom are now engaging in rather disgraceful grave-dancing) who branded her a terrorist apologist, a FARC collaborator and traitor to the nation. This directly resulted in her removal and disqualification from office by Alejandro Ordóñez, on the charges of promoting and collaborating with the FARC, a disciplinary sanction which was squashed by the Council of State in 2016 because the evidence collected (from Raúl Reyes' computers) was illegal and invalid. In the last two years, as she returned to the political frontline with the Pacto, her brother was arrested and later extradited to the US (his extradition was signed by Petro) and recently pled guilty to drug trafficking charges in the US.

Her replacement is not yet certain. Ferney Silva (ally of current interior minister and former Liberal senator Luis Fernando Velasco) was 24th on the closed list and would be next in line, but the future of Pacto-Polo senator Alexander López's seat is still uncertain - his election was invalidated by the Council of State last November, but he is fighting to save his seat (the odds are probably against him) so his seat hasn't been confirmed as vacant yet. If he does lose his seat, then Ferney Silva would replace him, which would leave the 25th on the Pacto's list, Edwin Palma (trade union leader, former president of the USO, the main oil workers' union), but he is now vice-minister of labour. These things move very slowly, so it won't be clear for a while.

Amidst the right-wing grave dancing, one reaction did stand out: Fedegan president José Félix Lafaurie, the husband of deranged far-right (CD) senator and 2026 presidential candidate María Fernanda Cabal (despite his very conservative politics, he accepted to join the Petro government's peace delegation with the ELN) - he tweeted "to the perseverant fighter ⁦@piedadcordoba a respectful goodbye on the day of her departure. She never let up, always on the front line to defend her ideas; those that are very distant from mine, she deserves respect. Peace in her grave." To which his wife, Cabal, tweeted that she was in complete disagreement with him, because Córdoba left "a debt of pain for relationship with the FARC; used her friendship with Chávez to profit" and left "owing the truth, in impunity"

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If people have any comments or suggestions regarding topics about Colombian politics that I could cover on my Substack, I'd be happy to hear them out.

I'd be interested in hearing a bit about Petro's environmental record (beyond the hippos!). Lula's progress on deforestation in Brazil is quite well known - has Petro achieved anything similar? I also know that late-term Duque fancied himself a bit of an environmentalist, but I'm not sure how much of that made its way into concrete achievements.

The other thing is agrarian reform. I remember a few people mentioning this at the beginning of the term, but not a lot has been heard about it since - what is the plan? Is such a reform already a non-starter due to Petro's unpopularity?

As an aside, it is a great shame that many of Petro's putative reforms, serious responses to genuine problems, are either going nowhere or will never see the light of day because he chose to spend virtually all of his political capital on an unwanted reform to the health service, one of the few parts of the Colombian state which already functions relatively well.

[jimros]

New Substack post about the main political news so far in 2024.


If people have any comments or suggestions regarding topics about Colombian politics that I could cover on my Substack, I'd be happy to hear them out.

I would be interested in hearing about what kind of a preview the municipal and regional elections gives us about the next round of national elections, particularly the congressional elections, like which parties are gaining or losing strength and where.

Also just a question that probably doesn't need to be covered on substack. There are no independents elected to congress, is that because the rules don't allow for that or because candidates who run as independents for the national legislature basically always lose, like in North America.