[News] Colombia: The Historic Pact Won, the First Triumph on the Road toward Change

[Anti-Imperialist News]

resumen-english.org
<https://www.resumen-english.org/2022/05/colombia-the-historic-pact-won-the-first-triumph-on-the-road-toward-change/>
Colombia: The Historic Pact Won, the First Triumph on the Road toward Change
By Manuel Humberto Restrepo Domínguez on May 30, 2022.

Gustavo Petro embraces his vice candidate, Francia Márquez

More than 20 million people out of nearly 40 million eligible to vote went
to the polls in Colombia on Sunday, in the most complex of all the
elections of this XXI century, in which the democratic center of former
president Uribe has continuously occupied the government palace and has
come to control all public powers by co-optation or decisions with implicit
corruption.

The victory of the left leaning Historical Pact was resounding and with 8.5
million votes it obtained the largest historical vote of an alternative
power group. The campaign of Gustavo Petro for president and Francia
Márquez for vice-president reached the most outstanding electoral peak so
far in Colombia, where the elites 200 years ago seized power and have
already repeated today, that they are not willing to give up the country
now. The greatest defeat was the candidate of the party in power that comes
from  entrails of Uribism and from whom current President Duque in practice
became his campaign manager. As their curtain began to come down they made
recent alterations to the constitution modifying the law of guarantees that
prevented contracting in electoral times and putting at the service of the
candidate his institutional resources, the deliberate intervention of the
commander of the military forces and the actions of ministers and heads of
portfolio; all of this was focused against the candidate Petro who was
besieged by the biased and unethical media matrix. Nevertheless Duque was
defeated, Uribe was defeated, the horror techniques against democratic
security were defeated.

In the election the unexpected candidate, who emerged and created his space
as a candidate without a party, was tough, macho, Rodolfo Hernández, a
former mayor and wealthy businessman with Trump like characteristics, who
tirelessly repeated as a campaign slogan to get the rats out of power and
end corruption by taking away the checkbook of the corrupt. He came in
second place with 6 million votes and is preparing to complete the missing
votes to arrive strengthened going into the second round.

The so-called center candidate Federico “Fico” Gutiérrez, a Uribista once
again played the politics of confusion, of the vacillating but dangerous
center for the second time, with the same erratic and indecipherable
strategy, promoter of a chameleon-like performance with no other sense than
being a spoiler in the hunt.

The preparation of the second round scheduled for June 19 is coming, and in
spite of the fact that the Uribista losing candidate, in his closing words,
publicly offered his support to Rodolfo, the anti-corruption candidate,
putting him in a tight spot and closing this path for him, because it will
not be easy for him to gain that many votes offered by the corruption that
Petro and Rodolfo together have just defeated. The Uribista strategy and
that of the Duque government, its congressional bench and high-ranking
officials, is perverse and directly opportunist, because they put a stick
in the wheel to Rodolfo’s campaign, who could not accept it, nor justify in
any way that to obtain the presidency he could count on  any vote of the
corrupt people he has just defeated.

In his closing speech Rodolfo said “the country won because it cannot
continue with the same men and women” and “who thought they were going to
govern eternally”, the ones he was referring to are precisely those of the
party in power, Uribismo, the government, who lost the most in this
election, and are always armored by the clans of corruption and are the
ones directly responsible for the greatest frauds and crimes against the
nation.

The Historic Pact is left with the option of continuing its unstoppable and
determined task of collecting electorally in the second round, the defeat
of the regime of hatred, which it has already achieved, and consolidating
its definitive triumph in the second round. Perhaps he will have to
campaign one by one for each new vote that comes from the more than 15
million abstainers, who on May 29 did not go out to vote and convince
diverse social groups that the country is not governed with slogans,
tik-tok phrases, nor disqualifications and rudeness. Thousands of peasants
and marginalized people were forced to vote for Uribism, which has entered
its decline and now they will be free to let their conscience speak, to
separate themselves from the old colonialists, patriarchs, always clinging
to policies of hate and death. In summary, there is a high percentage of
the  electorate that has not yet participated, Fico’s votes represent the
defeated corruption that no one can accept and, Rodolfo has serious
contradictions about corruption that is confusing.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano
<https://www.resumenlatinoamericano.org/2022/05/30/colombia-gano-el-pacto-historico-primer-triunfo-del-cambio/>
translation Resumen English
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