On June 19th, 2022, the Republic of Colombia held a historic election in which leftist candidate Gustavo Petro won the second round of the Colombian election, with a narrow victory margin of just a little over 50%. When he is sworn in, he will be Colombia’s first leftist president in the history of the Republic. 

This election comes after a long and intense electoral campaigning season between Petro and his opponent, Rodolfo Hernandez. Petro and Hernandez were the two candidates to accumulate the largest vote percentages in the first electoral round (with 40% and 28% respectively), which took place on the 19th of May, both running as political outsiders and anti-establishment candidates. As per the constitution of Colombia, a second runoff election between the two candidates that garnered the highest vote percentages was then scheduled for the 19th of June.

In the run-up to the second electoral round, determining who would be a frontrunner for Colombia’s highest office would remain elusive and frustratingly ambiguous for many observers. Different polling systems and platforms all gave different results- but most indicated a margin of victory for their predicted candidate of less than 3%, a trend reflected in the final electoral result. Since both men had campaigned as outsiders to the traditional Colombian political establishment, both were competing for the same kinds of swing voters.

Despite being an outsider to the ruling political establishment, Gustavo Petro is not new to politics. Gustavo Petro joined a Marxist militant group, M-19, at the age of 17. During most of his 20s, he spent his years smuggling weapons with which to arm the group. In 1985, however, Gustavo Petro was captured by the Army and arrested, and sentenced to 10 years in prison for illegal weapons possession- although he would only serve 18 months before being released in 1987. In 1991, the M-19 group reached a peace agreement with the Colombian federal government and agreed to form a political party and resort to fighting the system from the inside. The M-19 group formed a political party, within which Petro ran for a position in Colombia’s senate, which kicked off his career. He briefly served as mayor of Bogota, before returning to the senate.

His opponent, Rodolfo Hernandez, also had a rather unorthodox political career. Hernandez, for the majority of his life, was a businessman mainly operating in the construction industry. Hernandez first got into politics as Mayor of Bucaramanga in 2016, until his forced resignation in 2019 due to a suspected corruption charge- the trial for which he is still awaiting. During his term as Mayor, he was known for making many shocking and offensive statements, such as referring to Venezuelan women as “baby factories”, something which has offended many of the Venezuelan refugees living in Colombia at the time. He also referred to German dictator and mass murderer Adolf Hitler as a “great German thinker”, although he later insisted that this was a mistake and he meant to refer to Albert Einstein.

Initially, there had been fears of politically motivated violence in the aftermath of the election due to Petro’s work for M-19 and Hernandez’s frequent comparisons between himself and former United States President Donald Trump, who infamously refused to accept the results of the 2020 election. However, concerns about such violence have abated due to the reassurances of both Petro and Hernandez. Petro has been quoted as stating that he will govern with the “politics of love”, and Hernandez stated that he would accept the election results.

With the election of Gustavo Petro comes another historic first in Colombia’s history. Petro’s pick for Vice President, Francia Marquez, will be the first Afro-Colombian elected to the office in Colombia’s history.

With the election concluded, President-Elect Petro now will get a chance to follow through on his political promises when he is sworn in as President in August. Gustavo Petro campaigned on a complete reworking of Colombia’s economy- in particular abandoning the country’s long history of Fossil Fuel exploration. Petro claims he is intent on abandoning all new Fossil Fuel exploration, and banning new contracts for companies to continue to do so within Colombia. This would be a major step towards fighting climate change, and would make Colombia the largest oil exporter to stop issuing new contracts to companies. In order to compensate for this economic loss, Petro claims that he is also going to invest in new industries to diversify the Colombian economy. Petro claims he is simply trying to wean the country off of Fossil Fuels, as Colombia’s known oil reserves are expected to deplete in around 7 years.

Another hot button issue within Colombian politics is the Colombian War on Drugs. Colombia is one of the worlds largest illegal cocaine exporters, something the government has been fighting for several years. As a progressive, Gustavo Petro seeks to radically shift Colombia’s drug strategy from his conservative predecessors. Petro wishes to de-incentivize the growth of coca crops that are vital to cocaine production by providing economic incentives to farmers and developing rural areas, rather than focusing entirely on eradicating the crop. He also plans to continue peace talks with various armed groups involved in cocaine trafficking, such as the ELN.

On top of all of this, Gustavo Petro has vowed to expand and create ambitious social programs with the hopes of combating poverty and wealth inequality in the country. Colombia’s national poverty rate currently sits around 39%, with those numbers being higher for Afro-Colombians and Indigenous Colombians. Colombia is also an exceptionally unequal country, given that it takes the average impoverished family roughly 11 generations to escape poverty and reach the mean Colombian income. Petro has pledged to reduce poverty and inequality through social programs such as reworking the pension system, creating an entirely public healthcare system, providing subsidies to single mothers, and other such policies. To accomplish this, it is necessary that Petro raise government revenues, which he proclaimed he will do by raising taxes on Colombia’s richest citizens. Colombia has historically had famously low tax rates, collecting less revenue as a proportion of GDP than any other nation in South America.

Whether or not he actually can pass any of this platform still remains to be seen, however. In order to pass this ambitious agenda, Gustavo Petro needs support of the Colombian parliament, which he will certainly struggle to find. The Colombian parliament, at the moment, will likely remain hostile to Petro, given that his Historic Pact coalition (despite controlling the most seats of any party) still has a parliamentary minority. The Historic Pact currently controls roughly 20 of the 108 Colombian Senate seats, and 28 of the 172 seats in the House of Representatives. The Conservative Party, the Democratic Center Party, and the Radical Change party, all of which are center-right parties, could easily work together to shoot down any legislation Gustavo Petro places forth.