Colombia and elections that will define the candidates for president and which Congress will have the one that obtains the presidential sash

In less than a week, Colombians will have to choose the formation of the two chambers of Congress and on the same day several coalitions from different ideological sectors will define in primaries who will be their candidate for the Casa de Nariño (Presidential Palace).

188 members of the House of Representatives and 108 senators will be elected. These seats have a particularity, one hundred senators are chosen by vote, two are separated for indigenous people, five for the Comunes Party (formerly FARC) and one for the second presidential candidate. While the representatives of the Chamber are 162 elected by votes in the 32 departments of the country, 16 from the Special Transitory Circumscriptions of Peace, one from abroad, one for indigenous jurisdiction, one for the vice-presidential candidate who comes second, five for the exFARC and two for Afro-Colombians.

Colombian analyst Omar Rincón says that the legislative elections receive much less attention than the presidential ones and it is very difficult to know who will win because many people compete. In addition, there are closed lists and others in which you can vote for different candidates. For this reason, “it responds more to historical, corrupt and affectionate clienteles, but not for a specific proposal,” he points out.

He adds that that Sunday the attention is focused on the definition of the candidates for president, since the three main coalitions will have their primary in the same vote.

In the Historical Pact (left) Gustavo Petro is going to win, in the Esperanza Center it has weak candidates and Sergio Fajardo is supposed to win, and in the center right, due to the polls, Federico Gutiérrez would win, but in reality Alejandro Char should win. because it has the largest bureaucratic apparatus, comments Rincón.

Analyst Sergio Guzmán, director of Colombia Risk Analysis, on the other hand, believes that in the center Fajardo could still be lowered by Alejandro Gaviria or Juan Manuel Galán, so we have to wait.

In addition, there are also other presidential candidates who will go directly to the first presidential round in May, such as Rodolfo Hernández, Óscar Zuluaga or Íngrid Betancourt.

For Rincon in this election, political clienteles are key, since politicians and senators move a lot for this election because they need to be elected and they are going to move a lot so that the electoral machinery works. Something that will not happen in the first round because they no longer have to fight for their seats, but only the candidates for the presidency.

Despite the criticism and low approval of current President Iván Duque, the right has a chance of keeping the House of Nariño, because, as in 2018, the decisive point may be being for or against Petro. In that second round, Duque did not win but everyone went against Petro.

“Petro is responsible for Duque being there. If he had run a better campaign he would have been the president, but since he was such a fight and such a fear-monger in a super right-wing country like Colombia, where even the left is centrist… the union of all the right together can always win. in the second round, ”says Rincón, who believes that the final scenario of for or against Petro will be repeated in the ballot, although Petro is better this time than last time because he has had a better campaign, he has been less arrogant and arrogant and aggressive, in addition to the fact that “he has President Duque and the Minister of Defense as campaign manager who talk badly” about him all the time and what he does is annoy more Colombians who have “consensus that this is the worst president in history.

Rincón thinks that the bad relations between Legislative and Executive always find a cause because politicians always want power and negotiate. “I think that this time the representation of the Historical Pact is going to be high and it is not going to be like in other places that block everything… and as long as they give it some bureaucracy, some corruption, they are going to be in favor of that. For example, Duke has governed everything in his favor being unpopular and there has been no opposition of any kind. With Petro there may be some opposition, but when he was mayor of Bogotá he did not have a majority in the Council and it worked for him. Colombia in that is a very conservative country and it works that way”, he affirms.

Meanwhile, Guzmán thinks the same, no matter who wins the election, he will most likely have a difficult relationship with Congress because he will not have a majority, in addition to the fact that this election can also be a gauge for the next vote.

“He is going to tell us how the forces are composed after March 13. In other words, which candidate can build the greatest amount of support before the first round election on May 29,” says Guzmán, for whom the key would be how many people are going to participate in the legislative elections because he can talk about the things that can move into the future.

“In Colombia, more than 50% of people have never participated in Congress, at least in the last four elections the maximum participation was 47%, so that a greater number of people participate will be decisive to see if the left can translate, so to speak, those ideas of theirs into votes and convert them into seats, they have never done it, I don’t know if this time it will be the charm, “says Guzmán.

According to some projections, if Petro reaches the second round (June 19) with Fajardo, there is more chance that he will lose than if a right-wing candidate arrives who can be linked more to President Duque, because people do not want more than the same.

In addition, in the region there is a clear tendency to punish the ruling party after everything experienced by and during the pandemic. (I)