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News > Latin America

Colombia's Gustavo Petro: 'Progressives Together Would Win'

  • Gustavo Petro is polling second with 29% of support.

    Gustavo Petro is polling second with 29% of support. | Photo: EFE

Published 19 April 2018
Opinion

According to the latest poll Petro's presidential candidacy continues to grow. 

The most recent poll for the May 27 presidential elections in Colombia shows Gustavo Petro, former mayor of Bogota and current presidential candidate, has gained seven percentage points, going from 22 to 29 percent of voter intention.

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In an interview with Miguel Salazar, published by The Nation, Petro spoke of the failure of progressive and center-left candidates to form a viable coalition, the peace process, violence, and the economic model in Colombia.

For months Gustavo Petro has been going back and forth between the first and second places in the presidential race. Since Colombia’s legislative elections this March, he has polled in second, behind former President Alvaro Uribe’s candidate Ivan Duque.

The poll published Wednesday revealed that only eight points separate Petro from the leading candidate.

The left-leaning hopeful argues he still has a statistical possibility to win the elections, but warns that in Colombia electoral fraud and assassinations can always alter the political scenario.

Targeting left-wing or progressive political figures is not a novelty. In the 1980s over 3,000 members of the Patriotic Union were murdered by paramilitary and state security forces. Petro himself has received several death threats and his caravan was violently attacked in February during a visit to the northern city of Cucuta. He and his supporters believe the impact received by his car indicates a failed assassination attempt.

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During the interview, Petro highlighted "progressives together would win a majority of vote" to defeat Duque, who is openly against the peace deal signed between Santos’ government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) as well as the ongoing peace talk with the National Liberation Army (ELN).

Colombians have issued calls for a pro-peace electoral coalition to no avail. In the interview Petro admitted he had reached out to Sergio Fajardo, currently polling third, and Humberto de la Calle with three different proposals: running together under a single banner, creating a platform with one candidate, and holding primaries. “All three proposals were rejected”, he said.  

“Any faction that considers itself progressive would have to talk about broad social reforms of the kind I’ve proposed, like land reform, increasing government loans, and moving away from the oil and gas sectors. These liberal powers, at their base, are afraid of that,” Petro said to explain the lack of political will to form one united front.

He also stressed that peace in Colombia is not only dependent on a successful negotiation with insurgent groups, but “implies fundamental reforms—reforms that have to do with education, health care, with how the Colombian people can access the conditions that would allow them to build wealth through land, water, and clean energy.”

Furthermore, he highlighted the importance of moving away from an economy based on the extraction of natural resources that generates little employment, to implement a productive model based on agriculture and industry “where the source of economic surplus comes from labor.”  

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