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News > Colombia

Colombians Go to The Polls Hoping to Overcome a Deep Crisis

  • Leftist presidential candidate Gustavo Petro (L) addresses citizens, Colombia.

    Leftist presidential candidate Gustavo Petro (L) addresses citizens, Colombia. | Photo: Twitter/ @ColombiaHumana_

Published 10 March 2022
Opinion

Due to President Ivan Duque’s mismanagement of the pandemic, at least 21 million people currently live in poverty, and 3 million citizens remain unemployed in Colombia. 

On Sunday, 38 million Colombians will elect new lawmakers amid an economic, political, and social situation that has been rapidly deteriorating since President Ivan Duque took office in 2018. Below are some facts about the dramatic state of this South American country.

RELATED: 

2,432 Candidates Enrolled In Colombia's Legislative Elections

Unemployment, inflation, and poverty

Due to the Duque administration’s mismanagement of the pandemic, at least 21 million people currently live in poverty, and 3 million citizens remain unemployed in Colombia, whose annual inflation rate increased to 8.01 percent in February.

This situation has considerably lowered citizens’ purchasing power. Additionally, the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) estimates that the Colombian state will have to create at least 1.2 million jobs to counteract the economic recession.

"The crisis is not solved with good will, but with concrete actions," leftist presidential candidate Gustavo Petro stated and assured that he will implement an economic emergency decree to fight hunger, inflation, and poverty if he is elected.

Unattended popular demands

From April 2021 to August 2021, millions of Colombians took to the streets to demand tax reductions, the establishment of a minimum wage, the defense of national agricultural production, and an increase of the public expenditure in health and education.

In such demonstrations, the United Nations (UN) reported 60 rapes and 63 assassinations committed by the security forces against protesters. Despite the demonstrations' magnitude, none of the demands presented by its participants have yet been met.

Breaches of the Peace Agreement

The Institute for Peace and Development Studies (INDEPAZ) valued that the advances in the fulfillment of the 2006 Peace Agreement, which was signed between the Colombian State and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), do not exceed 20 percent.

According to the latest monitoring report on the agreement implementation, the State had only handed 0.08 percent of the 3 million land hectares that the Peace Agreement established that have to be ceded to farmers' families so that they improve their living conditions. 

Likewise, only 5.3 percent of the families linked to the National Comprehensive Programme for the Substitution of Illicit Crops have had the opportunity to create a production project not comprising narcotics. NGOs and social leaders agree that the delay in implementing the agreements is due to the non-presence of the Colombian State in rural areas.

Armed & Electoral violence 

In January, 4,400 citizens were victims of forced displacement due to territorial disputes among paramilitary groups, which usually exhort the civilian population to gain new territories for their drug trafficking and illegal mining activities.

So far this year, these groups have murdered 36 social leaders, 7 former guerrilla fighters who signed the 2016 Peace Agreement, and 61 citizens in 20 massacres.

Acts of political violence have also increased ahead of the upcoming legislative elections. The Peace and Reconciliation Foundation (PAREZ) reported that 26 people were victims of this type of violence in February.

 
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