Daily Times

Bogota: Colombians went to the polls Sunday to draw up a shortlist of candidates for presidential elections that may yield the country’s first-ever leftist leader.

Nearly 39 million of Colombia’s 50 million inhabitants were eligible to cast ballots in a complex but critical election in a country plagued by violence and growing poverty levels.

“Starting now, our auditors begin counting the votes,” election authority head Alexander Vega said when polls closed throughout the country at 4:00 pm local time (2100 GMT).

“Our voting stations worked correctly throughout the whole country,” he said.

On one part of the ballot, voters chose the composition of the Senate and House of Representatives, currently in the hands of right-wing parties.

But all eyes will be on the presidential primaries — called inter-party “consultations” — happening alongside the legislative vote.

In a country with a history of political violence and voter turnout traditionally below 50 percent, outgoing President Ivan Duque — who called Colombians to vote as a “rejection of violence” through the “triumph of democracy” — has promised safety “guarantees” for the non-compulsory vote.

It comes with the president and legislature both at rock-bottom levels of public opinion.

Colombia has always been ruled by the political right. But polls show that 61-year-old Gustavo Petro — a former guerrilla, ex-Bogota mayor and senator on the political left — stands a real chance of winning.

Also in the running is Ingrid Betancourt, who was once held hostage by the guerrillas of the now-defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). She is vying to represent centrist parties as an alternative to both the ruling right and Petro.

Sunday’s process is to yield three presidential contenders from 15 candidates hoping to represent groups of politically aligned parties — one each for the left, right and centre.

Three others have already been chosen by their respective groupings.

Six finalists will face off in a first round of presidential elections on May 29, which will be followed by a runoff on June 19 if no one wins an outright majority.

Around 6:00 p.m. local time, as the results came in, Petro had a significant early lead with 80 percent of the votes, against 15 percent for Francia Marquez, an Afro-Colombian woman.

Voters flocked to the polls in Bogota, although heavy rains at midday threatened continued turnout.

“I vote to change this Congress, where it is always the same people who do nothing” for years, nurse Carolina Lopez, 30, told AFP.

Polls show Petro has the support of about 45 percent of voters — more than any other candidate in a country traditionally distrustful of the left.

That distrust is widely associated with FARC and other rebel groups that fought the government in a nearly six-decade civil conflict.

“When the government is unpopular, there is alternation and the opposition wins, but in Colombia, this is new: the left has never really been in a position to win an election,” said analyst Yann Basset of the Rosario University in Bogota.

In 2018, Petro lost the presidential race to Duque, who is leaving office as his country’s most unpopular president in history following a year marked by social unrest and a violent police crackdown that drew international condemnation.

The right Duque represents is divided and has no clear frontrunner.

“Today, change starts at the polls, with a vote that supports hope and life in Colombia,” Petro said while voting.

It is also Betancourt’s second presidential run: she was abducted 20 years ago while campaigning and held captive in the jungle for more than six years.

If she goes through, her vice presidential running mate will be retired colonel Jose Luis Esparza, who rescued Betancourt from her FARC captors.

Colombian presidents serve a non-renewable four-year term.

At midday, the government said there was “total normality” in voting throughout the country. But the army reported two soldiers had been killed and another two wounded in bomb attacks in southern Colombia.

The country’s election authority confirmed an attempted cyberattack against its website before polling had begun, which they said was immediately controlled.

Interior Minister Daniel Palacios said there had been 662 reports of incidents related to the vote, including 166 complaints, 120 cases of voter coercion and 120 cases of attempted bribery.

Duque’s successor faces a multitude of challenges, not least of which is a new cycle of murders and kidnappings as violence has surged despite the 2016 peace deal that disarmed the FARC and officially ended the civil war.

Fighters of the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN) still battle dissidents of the disbanded FARC, paramilitary forces and drug cartels for territory, resources and smuggling routes in Colombia, the world’s largest cocaine exporter.

The new president will also have to contend with an economy hard hit by the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.