File photo. The President of the Republic of Colombia, Iván Duque Márquez, speaks to the press during a meeting with the President of the United States, Donald, in the Oval Office of the White House on March 2, 2020 in Washington. (Credit: Sarah Silbigear/Getty Images)
President Iván Duque’s approval rating is currently at a low level, with his term clouded by his administration’s handling of police misconduct, inequality, and clashes between organized criminal groups.
Popular discontent has put the left in the crosshairs of the presidency for the first time in the country’s history. Still, the preliminary results represent a setback for Petro, 62, a former guerrilla fighter and former mayor of Bogotá, who had been widely considered one of the leading candidates.
The big losers in this first round were President Iván Duque and former president Álvaro Uribe, the latter especially decisive when it came to not supporting any candidate, according to analyst Vicente Torrijos.
Uribismo has ceased to be the electoral force that it had been in the last 20 years, because, as analyst Rafael Nieto Loaiza previously told CNN en Español, “the election of Duque as president and the four years of his government, which they have been the target of criticism from their own party, they have this political force in decline”.
And with a high degree of unfavorability, former President Álvaro Uribe himself has recognized that his support for any candidate in the 2022 presidential elections might subtract instead of add.
“Any candidate I approach, right there they say ‘Uribista’ and put a stigma on him,” Uribe said in mid-April.
Finally, the elections were also a referendum on the government of Iván Duque, who optimistically told the BBC last week that if he had stood for election he would have been re-elected. And what this first presidential round shows is that following a government of four years with much adversity and great protests, Colombians want Duque and his very unpopular government out of Colombian politics.
However, following the adhesion of Gutiérrez and several right-wing politicians to Hernández’s campaign, for many Uribismo is not dead, it has only been transformed.