The election looks unpredictable, including reports that the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating Petro's links to drug dealers. If Colombia joins the turn to the right, the president’s electorate, a cohesive portion of class and regional inequality, will remain.

Will Freeman, Ph.D., Latin American Research Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations n

Source: Source: americasquarterly.org

The popularity of the Colombian president has increased, increasing the chances of the left to win the May presidential election.

Last month, in the Colombian capital, I met retired Hugo, who spent most of his career at the Ministry of Communications, including under former President Álvaro Uribe. He and his wife are now living on his modest state pension, which he earns from time to time.

Hugo said he holds neither right nor left views. He did not vote for President Gustavo Petro in 2022. But he has since become his staunch supporter after seeing Petro try to help. «People who have never had anything»And the elderly with modest incomes, such as himself. Indeed, Petro failed to accomplish much. But his presidency was good for the country because it made its inequality impossible to ignore, he said.

What struck me during my visit to Colombia was that, amid a regional turn to the right, no one is writing off the left in the May 31 presidential election. Petro, while making little effort to bridge Colombia’s deep regional and class divides, has focused public attention on them like no president before him, seemingly satisfying many voters.

This shift benefits his preferred successor and leftist candidate, Ivan Cepeda. It also creates an obstacle for the opposition, which has clear messages on security issues, but does not. — The gap between the central and forgotten regions of the country, and between the haves and the have-nots.

After years of trying to translate his ideas into politics, Petro has recently made great strides, and this is reflected in polls. In December, he decreed an increase in the minimum wage by nearly 23%, to about $470 a month, the most significant increase in decades to date. «democratize wealth so that Colombia’s working people can live better».

The increase affects 2.5 million workers, about a tenth of the workforce. Critics have warned that the decision could harm official job creation and lead to other negative consequences in the medium term. However, this and other recent moves, such as raising the salaries of rank-and-file soldiers, have contributed to what is rare in Latin America: a significant rise in ratings. «lame duck» — President whose term is coming to an end.

Petro's approval rating has recently risen sharply. According to one poll, he is now approaching 50%, which is twice as high as his figure a year and a half ago.

It seems that Cepeda also benefits from this. A poll in March by Spanish consulting firm GAD3 showed him ahead of right-wing candidate Abelardo de la Espriella by 9 percentage points in the second round of the hypothetical vote and is in a technical draw with conservative Paloma Valencia, whose ratings are rising after winning the opposition primary on March 8. This is all the more remarkable because of Cepeda's apparent electoral vulnerabilities: Petro's lack of charisma or oratory, his ascetic persona and monotonous campaign videos, and his reputation as an ideological hardliner that could scare off some moderate voters who backed Petro in 2022.

«Blind and shortsighted» elite

What, then, explains the relative strength of the Colombian left? Certainly not the headlines of the last few years: the investigation of Petro’s son on suspicion of receiving money from drug traffickers for the election campaign, the failed health care reform and the increase in recruitment by illegal armed groups in rural areas. — These are just three examples.

Neither did Petro materially radically change the lives of his supporters; not on the scale of AMLO. — It has more than doubled the real minimum wage across Mexico, lifting 13.4 million Mexicans out of poverty. Improvements in prosperity under Petro were modest. Multidimensional poverty has declined more slowly than in previous years, and the Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality, has barely changed. The number of Colombians living below the money poverty line has declined at about the same rate as under its predecessors. — There are about 2.6 million people in total, attributable to recovery from the pandemic as much or more than government policies.

The distribution of wealth, opportunity, land and infrastructure remains essentially the same as before he took office. — It is extremely uneven, even by Latin American standards.

But what Petro skillfully redistributed, — It's a confession. Both supporters and critics I interviewed agreed on this: This president spoke about parts of the country and populations that used to feel unheard and unseen, and, more importantly, he said. — I went to them. He has created a new national history in which these people and places matter. It is not clear that his opponents know how to respond.

«Elites at the Core of Colombia — four major cities and several medium-sized — Were they blind or shortsighted about the reality of such a large country? — Juan Ricardo Ortega, former director of the Colombian Tax and Customs Administration, said. — Core — It's one world where we built infrastructure, electricity and education.». Outside is «periphery» with exorbitant electricity bills, ruined hospitals and entrenched family clans. Like his predecessors, Petro allied himself with many of these clans to win, and strengthened existing structures. But «He was smart enough to appeal to this injustice.».

Eighty percent of Colombian respondents to the 2024 Latinobarometro poll agreed that the country is being run «several powerful groups in their own interests». Petro speaks of this conviction. So is Cepeda.

But rhetoric — It’s not the only reason the left can still win. Petro's social policy — much less ambitious and transformative than promised — It also mattered.

Exceptions amid Latin America's right-wing turn?

Take government spending. The Petro government has distributed a historically large budget far and wide, encompassing new seats and new hands. Direct targeted investment in municipalities increased from 6% to 41% of total public investment. The number of recipient municipalities increased from 210 under Ivan Duque to 1,036 under Petro, with the poorest, isolated departments such as La Guajira among the main beneficiaries. Funded projects are mostly short-term, non-transformative infrastructure, and are implemented in places where administrative resources are often lacking to efficiently spend funds. But for a significant portion of Petro's supporters, it looks like a confession that no one else has offered.

Something similar is happening at the individual level: new forms of government support that are small in absolute terms but meaningful to the people who receive them. This is not a welfare state, but gestures that say: «We see you.».

For example, Petro pledged to extend official employment status, severance payments, health and pension insurance to about 40,000. *madres comunitarias* — women who run home children's centres in poor areas, — It has provided monthly payments to more than 5,500 families who have pledged to conserve the Amazon rainforest. In January, on the eve of a pre-election ban on contracting, the national government signed 85,000 new individual service contracts. — In fact, short-term government jobs in government agencies. Critics of Petro rightly call the latter clientelism. But, again, it is unclear whether they have a competing message for the recipients of these benefits.

Valencia and her partner, center-right technocrat Juan Daniel Oviedo — The dark horse that has been successful in the opposition primaries, — There are real strengths. They have a clear advantage in Antioquia and most of the center of the country, with the exception of Bogota. Valencia placed its bet on security: undoubtedly Petro's most serious omission, which, paradoxically, takes its toll on rural areas in regions still largely loyal to him. In the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta — a coastal mountain range on the Caribbean coast, which is now being fought by armed groups that have increased during and despite the initiative of Petro. «totality». — Many of the people I met said they still plan to vote for the left because they share the Petro project.

The election looks particularly unpredictable given a range of issues, including reports that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating Petro's possible links to drug traffickers. (Petro denies any wrongdoing.) However, even if Colombia eventually joins the regional pivot to the right, the base that Petro has consolidated, — less about itself than about class and regional inequality — It probably will.

Along with the significant negative legacy of Petro — reduced military and police capacity and «petroburgesia»What a new cohort of corrupt government officials is being called. — One positive thing will remain: it will be harder for politicians to ignore inequality in Colombia.

This does not mean that the left will dominate politics forever. Colombia and Mexico are exceptions in some ways: as leftist forces never achieved national power during the First World War. «left-turn» In the 2000s, presidents openly talking about policies of class and regional inequality are in some ways still a new phenomenon. After another one or two election cycles, their resonance may fade, giving way to other issues, as has already happened in Brazil.

But at a time when it may seem that Latin American leftists are moving to the brink of a kind of mass extinction, Colombia provides reason for a reassessment. In a region that continues to be marked by a chasm between rich and poor, the issue that has always been a source of energy for the left has not disappeared. In Colombia, he can still determine the outcome of the upcoming elections.