COLOMBIA’S HARD-LINE former defence minister made a mockery of opinion polls to take a commanding first-round lead in a presidential election analysts had said was too close to call.
Going into Sunday’s vote, polls had Juan Manuel Santos neck-and-neck with Green Party candidate Antanas Mockus, whose progressive policies caught the imagination of the country’s urban middle class.
But with almost all votes counted, Mr Santos won 46.6 per cent of the total, just shy of a knockout victory of over 50 per cent. Mr Mockus came in a distant second with just 21.5 per cent of the vote. The two now face a run-off round on June 20th in which Mr Santos is overwhelming favourite.
The son of one of the country’s most powerful families, he ran as the political heir to the hugely popular incumbent Álvaro Uribe, considered by many Colombians as the nation’s saviour and to whom Mr Santos dedicated his victory, telling ecstatic supporters at a rally: “This is your victory, President Uribe, and for all of us who want to defend your enormous legacy.” Since taking power in 2002, Mr Uribe has led a ruthless campaign against the country’s Marxist insurgency. He ordered the military on the offensive, taking back large swathes of territory from guerrillas financed by the proceeds of the country’s cocaine trade. The transformation in the country’s security situation means his popularity has been little dented by allegations of collusion between his supporters and the country’s murderous right-wing paramilitaries.
Mr Santos served as Mr Uribe’s defence minister and was involved in high-profile successes against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), the continent’s biggest guerrilla movement. With Mr Santos at the helm, the army killed three of the group’s top leaders, including Raúl Reyes, its number two and chief ideologue. He also orchestrated Operation Jaque, in which the Farc was tricked into handing over to the military its most valuable hostages, including a former presidential candidate and three US military contractors.
His victory is just the latest example of pollsters in South America overestimating the support of media-friendly candidates who appeal to the urban middle class at the expense of those with access to political machines skilled at turning out poorer voters in rural areas and slums.
A political independent, Mr Mockus is a successful former mayor of the capital, Bogotá, who won praise for implementing innovative solutions to the city’s chronic traffic problems and bringing down the murder rate by setting up a community watch network.
At a rally on Sunday night, he told supporters that they still had a chance “to achieve a deep cultural change” in the second round.
But he now faces a monumental challenge – even in his political base of Bogotá voters plumped for Mr Santos by a wide margin. The Green won in just one of Colombia’s 33 electoral districts, the sparsely populated jungle department of Putumayo.
But Mr Mockus, who disclosed during the campaign that he has Parkinson’s disease, can still claim to have helped transform the country’s political scene, lifting the Green Party to a presidential run-off round, inconceivable at the start of the campaign just three months ago.
Candidates from the country’s two traditional parties, the Conservatives and Liberals, which until the Uribe phenomenon had dominated Colombian politics for over a century, polled just over 10 per cent between them.
The election was also a setback for the Alternative Democratic Pole, Colombia’s main left-wing group, whose candidate came in fourth place, winning just 9 per cent of the vote.
This was less than half its total in 2006, when it came second in what was a record showing for Colombia’s democratic left, which has long struggled for a political foothold in the face of violent hostility from the guerrillas in the jungle and right-wing paramilitaries in the cities.