Gustavo Petro wins election as Colombia joins leftist tilt in Latin America

Ex-guerrilla Gustavo Petro has been elected the first left-wing president of crisis-wracked ­Colombia.

Gustavo Petro acknowledges supporters in Bogota on Sunday. Picture: AFP

Ex-guerrilla Gustavo Petro has been elected the first left-wing president of crisis-wracked ­Colombia after beating millionaire businessman Rodolfo Hernandez in a tense and unpredictable runoff election.

“Today is a celebration for the people. Let’s celebrate the first popular victory,” the 62-year-old former mayor of Bogota said.

Mr Hernandez, 77, accepted the result in a Facebook live broadcast. “I hope that Mr Gustavo Petro knows how to run the country and is faithful to his discourse against corruption,” the construction magnate said.

Mr Petro succeeds the deeply unpopular conservative Ivan Duque, who was barred by ­Colombia’s constitution from standing for re-election, in a country saddled with widespread poverty and a surge in violence.

In another moment of history, environmental activist and feminist Francia Marquez, 40, will ­become Colombia’s first black woman vice-president.

The election result continued a trend in recent years where many countries in the region have swung to the left, although some would argue those are populist moves as much as ideological ones.

Argentina, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Bolivia and Honduras have all moved to the left in their last elections and Mr Petro’s victory sparked a feeling of fraternity among these leaders.

“Your victory validates democracy and ensures the path towards an integrated Latin America in this time when we demand maximum solidarity amongst brother peoples,” tweeted Argentina President Alberto Fernandez.

The US – which riled many Latin American leaders by not inviting the authoritarian heads of Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela to the recent Summit of the Americas – sent congratulations to “the people of Colombia for making their voices heard in a free and fair presidential election”.

“We look forward to working with President-Elect Petro to further strengthen the US-Colombia relationship and move our ­nations toward a better future,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

Supporters of Gustavo Petro celebrate after the presidential runoff election in Cali, Colombia. Picture: AFP

Mr Petro, who has been in politics for 30 years, will have to deal with a country reeling economically from the pandemic, a spike in drug-trafficking related violence and deep-rooted anger at the political establishment that spilt over into mass anti-government protests in April last year.

Almost 40 per cent of the country lives in poverty while 11 per cent is unemployed.

A self-styled “revolutionary” warrior for the marginalised – black and indigenous people, the poor and the young – Mr Petro promises to address hunger and inequality.

Mr Petro’s success could heal the wounds in a country in which political assassinations are not uncommon – five presidential candidates were murdered over the course of the 20th century.

He referenced the 10-year ­Colombian civil war that broke out after the 1948 assassination of leftist presidential candidate Jorge Eliecer Gaitan and was the precursor to the six-decade long conflict between the state and left-wing guerrillas.

“Today’s triumph can be the end of this curse and the awakening for this brotherly and dignified people,” said Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Left-wing ideology is intrinsically linked in many Colombians’ minds to the country’s six-decade long multi-faceted conflict, leaving many to fear what a Petro presidency would represent.

Mr Petro was a radical leftist urban guerrilla in the 1980s and spent ­almost two years in jail. But his M-19 group made peace with the state in 1990 and formed a political party.

Michael Shifter, from the Inter-American Dialogue think tank, said fears Colombia could turn into another authoritarian populist socialist state like neighbouring Venezuela “borders on hysteria”. However, he said it was understandable since Colombia had been affected more than any other Latin American country by “the Venezuela tragedy and nightmare”.

AFP