Colombia’s presidential election pits outgoing leader’s ally against pro-Trump candidates

Colom­bians milled in­to vot­ing sta­tions on Sun­day in the first round of the South Amer­i­can na­tion’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, choos­ing be­tween can­di­dates with rad­i­cal­ly di­verg­ing vi­sions for the fu­ture of peace in a coun­try haunt­ed by decades of armed con­flict.

The vote, seen as a ref­er­en­dum on out­go­ing Pres­i­dent Gus­ta­vo Petro’s poli­cies, comes 10 years af­ter Colom­bia signed an his­toric peace pact with guer­ril­las of the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Armed Forces of Colom­bia, or FARC.

That agree­ment of­fered hope to break the na­tion’s vi­cious cy­cle of fight­ing be­tween rebel groups and the gov­ern­ment, but vi­o­lence has roared back since then, com­ing to a head in the lead-up to the pres­i­den­tial vote. Crim­i­nal groups have in­creas­ing­ly launched drone strikes, armed at­tacks have plagued the race and last June, 39-year-old politi­cian and pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Miguel Uribe Tur­bay was fa­tal­ly shot at a po­lit­i­cal ral­ly.

In a coun­try where the fight for peace has long been a part of the po­lit­i­cal ethos, the ques­tion of how to ad­dress the con­flict is once again di­vid­ing the coun­try.

The vote is ex­pect­ed to send a mes­sage to Latin Amer­i­ca at a time vot­ers are in­creas­ing­ly ditch­ing lead­ers that pitched pro­gres­sive poli­cies — such as pro­vid­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to young peo­ple and root­ing out cor­rup­tion and solv­ing se­cu­ri­ty is­sues — and turned in­stead to heavy-hand­ed se­cu­ri­ty crack­downs like in El Sal­vador. It al­so comes as the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is plac­ing re­newed pres­sure on the re­gion.

“To­day’s elec­tion isn’t just im­por­tant for us, it’s im­por­tant for all of Latin Amer­i­ca,” said Juan Aceve­do, a 62-year-old so­ci­ol­o­gist walk­ing out of a vot­ing sta­tion in Colom­bia’s cap­i­tal on Sun­day morn­ing. “Who­ev­er wins here will sug­gest to the re­gion if pro­gres­sive poli­cies will con­tin­ue or if things are go­ing to re­turn to the right.”

Three top can­di­dates have stark­ly dif­fer­ent ap­proach­es

There are 11 can­di­dates run­ning for pres­i­dent, but the elec­tion has ba­si­cal­ly turned in­to a three-horse race.

Sen­a­tor and peace-builder Ivan Cepe­da — a Petro al­ly — has led the polls and promis­es to car­ry on with Petro’s “to­tal peace” ini­tia­tive to ne­go­ti­ate with the coun­try’s re­main­ing rebel groups and sign peace agree­ments with them in an ef­fort to re­solve the per­sis­tent cri­sis.

While the peace plan has large­ly failed as crim­i­nals have tak­en ad­van­tage of cease­fires with the gov­ern­ment, Cepe­da and Petro have main­tained strong sup­port among many be­cause of pro­gres­sive poli­cies pushed for­ward un­der Petro, such as boost­ing the min­i­mum wage.

Run­ning against Cepe­da are Abelar­do de la Es­priel­la and Palo­ma Va­len­cia, who have vowed to come down on armed groups with a heav­ier hand.

De la Es­priel­la — a bom­bas­tic lawyer known as “The Tiger” — has par­tic­u­lar­ly gained trac­tion among vot­ers in re­cent weeks for pitch­ing him­self as an out­sider keen on em­u­lat­ing the heavy-hand­ed tac­tics used in El Sal­vador’s war on gangs, which sharply re­duced gang vi­o­lence but fu­eled ac­cu­sa­tions of hu­man rights abus­es.

Both Cepe­da and de la Es­priel­la en­tered vot­ing lo­ca­tions on Sun­day sur­round­ed by heavy se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel who held bul­let-proof shields over the politi­cians’ heads.

Va­len­cia is con­sid­ered the po­lit­i­cal pro­tege of Colom­bia’s for­mer pres­i­dent and strong­man Ál­varo Uribe, who gov­erned from 2002 to 2010 with strong sup­port from the Unit­ed States and whose gov­ern­ment beat back FARC rebels in an of­fen­sive that took a mas­sive civil­ian toll.

Both de la Es­priel­la and Va­len­cia have tout­ed their affin­i­ty for U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump even as he has tak­en a more ag­gres­sive stance to­ward Latin Amer­i­ca than any U.S. pres­i­dent in decades and has pres­sured na­tions like Colom­bia, Ecuador and Mex­i­co to more force­ful­ly crack down on crim­i­nal groups.

If no can­di­date wins at least 50% of the vote — some­thing ex­treme­ly rare in Colom­bia — the two top vote-get­ters will face a runoff in June.

Colom­bians al­so dis­agree on how best to tack­le the vi­o­lence

Maria Eu­ge­nia, a 57-year-old seam­stress who was stitch­ing a pair of jeans on Fri­day in down­town Bo­gotá, Colom­bia’s cap­i­tal, said she wel­comed an all-out of­fen­sive on an ex­pand­ing slate of crim­i­nal groups, re­gard­less of the hu­man cost.

While she ap­proved of Petro’s push­es to im­prove the coun­try’s med­ical in­fra­struc­ture, she said she was vot­ing for de la Es­priel­la be­cause vi­o­lence in rur­al ar­eas of the coun­try has got­ten out of hand. She said ne­go­ti­at­ing peace pacts was sim­ply “re­ward­ing” armed groups.

“Of course, when­ev­er you come down with a heavy hand, there’s al­ways go­ing to be de­bate,” she said. “But some peo­ple are go­ing to have to fall to clean up what needs to be cleaned.”

Oth­ers, like Aceve­do, the so­ci­ol­o­gist strolling out of a polling sta­tion on Sun­day with packs of oth­er vot­ers, said a se­cu­ri­ty crack­down like the one pro­mot­ed by de la Es­priel­la would on­ly be re­turn­ing to past mil­i­tary cam­paigns that he said on­ly re­in­forced Colom­bia’s cy­cle of vi­o­lence.

He said he planned to vote for Cepe­da, adding that while the gov­ern­ment hasn’t done a per­fect job — fail­ing to pass am­bi­tious re­forms and fol­low through on promis­es to re­duce vi­o­lence — it was bet­ter to con­tin­ue push­ing for­ward with their po­lit­i­cal coali­tion’s ef­forts to take a dif­fer­ent ap­proach in ad­dress­ing the coun­try’s vi­o­lence.

He added that his main cri­tique of Petro’s ad­min­is­tra­tion was the pow­er grabs made by crim­i­nal groups as they ne­go­ti­at­ed with the gov­ern­ment. He said he hoped that if Cepe­da won, he would strike a bet­ter bal­ance be­tween ne­go­ti­at­ing peace and main­tain­ing con­trol over those groups.

“We’re a coun­try that has lived through 60 years of con­flict,” Aceve­do said. “The dan­ger here is that we re­turn to the times where every­one is say­ing that the on­ly way to solve our prob­lems is with bul­lets and more war.” —BO­GOTÁ, Colom­bia (AP)

_______

Sto­ry by MEGAN JANET­SKY and ASTRID SUÁREZ | As­so­ci­at­ed Press