A-Infos (en) Colombia, Vía Libre: Analysis of the second round of the 2022 presidential elections (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

In this text we present an analysis of the results of the second round of the 
2022 presidential elections in Colombia from the perspective of Grupo Libertario 
Vía Libre. To that end, we analyze the increase in electoral participation, the 
historic victory of the center left, the deep limitations of the national 
agreement program and democratic capitalism, as well as some anarchist 
perspectives for social change. ---- Increased voter turnout ---- According to 
bulletin 63 of the pre-count of the National Registry of Civil Status, with 
99.99% of the tables counted, these votes registered a relative increase in 
participation in these elections: 22,658,694 votes and 58.09% of the total number 
of voters. This represents an increase of 1,217,089 votes and an increase of 3.1% 
compared to the first round; registering the largest concurrence to a second 
round since 1998 and the second largest record since the beginning of the 
application of this mechanism in the country.
In addition, compared to the May 29 elections, there was an increase in the blank 
vote and, to a lesser extent, the invalid vote, while the unmarked vote 
decreased. In this way, 501,987 blank votes were presented and 2.24% of the 
total, an important growth of 136,223 votes and 37.24% of the total, although 
still within a lower weight. Likewise, there were 271,667 invalid votes and 
1.19%, an increase of 29,849 votes and 12.34% of the total, in addition to 23,615 
unmarked votes and 0.10%, a decrease of 3,105 votes and a loss of 11.32% of the 
total.
Participation was majority in 22 territories, especially in the departments of 
the center of the country, with Bogotá registering 65.49% attendance, 
Cundinamarca 67.68%, Boyacá 66.68% and Santander with 67.65%; the southwest with 
Cauca showing 65.07% and Nariño 63.07%; and the eastern plains with Meta with 
64.18% and Casanare with 68.02%, the latter, the highest percentage in the country.
In contrast, the majority abstained in 11 territories, with the low participation 
of the Caribbean coast in departments such as San Andrés with 32.5%, the lowest 
record of these administrative units in this election, as well as La Guajira 
39.58%, Bolívar with 48.20% and even the progressive government region of 
Magdalena 49.47%; the most distant zone of the Orinoquia with Vichada with 37%, 
Guainía with 39% and Arauca with 49.82%; the south of the Amazon region with 
Vaupés with 37.3% and Amazonas with 46.2%, as well as the department of Choco 
with 47.82% and consulates abroad with 31.46%, the lowest record of all the 
territories.
Historic victory of the center left
The main news of the day is, clearly, the triumph obtained by the center-left 
formula of Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez; of the social democratic coalition 
of the Historical Pact with 11,281,013 votes and 50.44% of the total. Petro, a 
former member of the nationalist guerrilla of the April 19 Movement, achieved an 
increase of 2,739,396 votes and a growth of 32.1% compared to the first round, 
managing to collect the majority of the centrist vote, as well as important 
liberal, conservative and political sectors. Christians, in addition to 
previously abstentionist fringes.
Petro, in the past senator and mayor of Bogotá, won in 17 territories of the 
country, basically the same as in the first round, except in the 2 departments of 
Risaralda and Quindío in which he lost primacy. His candidacy won in Bogotá with 
58.5%; in addition to the 7 departments of the Caribbean coast, standing out 
Guajira with 64.5%, Atlántico with 67% and Sucre 64%; the 4 departments of the 
Pacific coast with Cauca with 79.02%, Nariño with 80.9% and Chocó with 81.9%; 
most of the Amazon region with 4 departments, with Putumayo with 79.6% and Vaupés 
with 74%; in addition to the minority vote in the consulates of the southern cone 
and Europe.
The second place was occupied by the populist centrist formula of Rodolfo 
Hernández and Marelen Castillo of the right-wing League of Governors against 
corruption, which obtained 10,580,412 votes and 47.31% of the total. The former 
mayor of Bucaramanga obtained an increase of 4,615,077 votes and an increase of 
77.4%, in the vote compared to the first round, managing to add the majority but 
not all the votes of the right-wing candidacies of Federico Gutiérrez who 
supported him with his movement and John Milton Rodríguez who did it in a 
personal capacity.
Hernández won in 16 territories, the same as in the first round, plus the 
additions of the great Caldas and the traditional plazas of Uribismo in Antioquia 
and of Colombians abroad. The construction businessman led the vote in the Andean 
region with Norte de Santander and 77.8%, Santander with 72.9% and Antioquia with 
63.9%; the Orinoquía with 4 departments such as Arauca with 67% and Casanare with 
70.26%; the minority from the Amazon region with 2 departments such as Caquetá 
with 53.46%; in addition to voters abroad, especially in North America and the 
high Andean region.
Between the first and the second candidacy there is a small difference of just 
700,060 votes and 3.13%, which, however, was slightly higher than what was 
predicted by most of the latest polls. This is the closest difference since the 
1994 runoff results and, again, he ranked second by the closest margin in the 
nation's ballots.
On the other hand, it seems clear that while Hernández lost voting intention in 
recent weeks, especially from his virtual majority after the first round, Petro 
grew in this period, adding adhesions more organically than his competitor, who 
attracted more fragmented support, especially, after his refusal to dialogue 
requested by the centrist Fajardo.
It is striking that the candidacy of the bosses' unity, weakened and marked by 
anti-communist fear, gathered around the millionaire Hernández, suffered, for the 
first time in modern history, an electoral defeat. And this occurred largely as a 
result of a historic crisis of legitimacy of the Duque government, the 
fragmentation of the right and the center with the parallel unity of the left, as 
well as the growing politicization of the middle and popular sectors, situations 
whose origin is not so much the electoral situation itself, but the social 
explosion of 2021.
The call for national agreement and democratic capitalism
In his victory speech, President-elect Petro pointed out various elements of his 
political program that call for caution: first, he explained his call for the 
politics of love, with which he would seek to overcome the political sectarianism 
of the past and improve bases of understanding and dialogue between various 
national actors, including leaders such as Hernández, Gutiérrez and Uribe. In 
this sense and in indirect reference to Uribismo, he maintained that he was not 
going to use state power to destroy his opponents.
Secondly, and connected to the above, he outlined the proposal for a Great 
National Agreement that he vaguely defined as a project of unity among all the 
inhabitants of the country and all sectors of society in search of common 
national objectives. This, in search of building the maximum consensus necessary 
to carry out the reforms promised in his program.
Thirdly, he reiterated a conservative element of his program that he states as 
the defense of democratic capitalism, very present in his electoral propaganda, 
from which he rejected the accusation that he would expropriate the goods and 
properties of the country's citizens launched by the right and business elites. 
Thus, he defended his idea that capitalism had to be developed in Colombia, a 
sentence that was sadly acclaimed by his followers in the coliseum.
Repeating a very old, but still effective, political formulation of leftist 
reformism, Petro argued that before thinking about anti-capitalist tasks, the 
country had to overcome pre-modernity, feudalism, and the new slavery. He then 
defended the so-called economic pluralism and his commitment to democratic 
capitalism, "hopefully productive, hopefully not speculative", as well as the 
commitment to a strong productive economy that overcomes extractivism. He also 
mentioned the liberal formula that in order to redistribute, you must first produce.
Fourth, he reiterated his idea of environmental justice, defended his program of 
transition from fossil fuels, especially from oil to clean and renewable 
energies, protection of water as a human right, defense of the Amazon rainforest 
as the lung of the world and negotiation and an environmental economic pact with 
large polluters such as the United States.
In fifth place, he mentioned his reforms, a flag aimed at fulfilling the social 
promises, postponed until today, of the 1991 Constitution and called for the 
constitution to live and walk among the population. This would include a poorly 
defined agrarian reform, ensuring food for all boys and girls, free university 
for young people and a decent pension for the elderly population. In this 
section, he highlighted the leading role of youth and women in his campaign and 
claimed the ethnic and cultural diversity of the country, as well as a 
perspective of greater Latin American integration.
On the other hand, in her speech, the vice president-elect Francia Márquez, amid 
the exaltation of the participation of various sectors in the electoral campaign, 
stated that this would be a government of the people with calloused hands and of 
the nobody, a government of the popular sectors. However, this is still a long 
way off and it seems clear that this type of political representation is not in 
the electoral program or in Petro's intentions.
Perspectives for change in the social movement
The victory of the first center-left candidate in the republican history of the 
country represents a historic milestone, in which it was, until recently, the 
last unscathed bastion of the continental right. This great political event 
anticipates the end of a historical cycle marked by the hegemony of Uribismo that 
began in 2002 and represents an interesting example of the radicalization towards 
the left of the political scene, which emerged after the great national strikes 
of November 21, 2019 and the April 28, 2021.
In parallel, Petro's center-left candidacy is quite clear in its commitment to 
moderation and pragmatism, with a campaign more oriented towards the political 
center than that of 2018, and a clear increase in the presence of saintly and 
liberal elements, proximity to sectors of the Partido de la U such as Roy 
Barreras and even parapolitical structures such as the López clan in Sucre. The 
great anti-neoliberal, anti-corruption and anti-establishment front that Petro 
has preached without much coherence, reached a great numerical apogee but an 
inverse weakening of its internal consistency.
On the other hand, this will be a weak government, with a minority in Congress 
where at the moment it has 25 of 108 allied senators and 35 of 188 
representatives in the related chamber, an even more accentuated minority in 
regional power where its allies control only 3 of the 32 departments. In 
addition, the progressive administration will be harassed by the big 
Uribe-inclined business press such as the majority conglomerates of El Tiempo, 
Semana, Caracol and RCN, and will have the open opposition of the employers' 
National Trade Council. At the same time, it will maintain tensions with the 
conservative inertia of the control organisms and important sectors of the 
judiciary, and the loyalty of the Security Forces committed to the 
anti-subversive war has yet to be deciphered. To overcome this situation,
Faced with this panorama, our task is to try to overcome the current progressive 
and caudillista illusion and work to deepen popular self-confidence, taking 
advantage of the current enthusiasm of the masses to strengthen social 
organization at all levels, defending the importance of breaking the culture of 
dependency and subordination to governments and the centrality of the principle 
and practice of autonomy and self-management for the popular movement. We seek to 
organize an anti-authoritarian overflow, from below and to the left, capable of 
achieving the profound social reforms that our people yearn for and that only 
they themselves can achieve and maintain.
Up those who fight!
Freeway Libertarian Group

https://grupovialibre.org/2022/06/21/analisis-de-la-segunda-vuelta-de-las-elecciones-presidenciales-de-2022-en-colombia/

https://www.facebook.com/vialibre.grupolibertario/posts/5144619925658805
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