The electoral results of last Sunday in Colombia leave many lessons for all the political sectors of the continent, both from the right and from the left. And the political process that has taken place in the last 20 years in my country is an x-ray of the extent to which polarization and hate speech reach in a politically modern society such as Colombia’s. Of course, there are still many chapters to write in this story but so far this is what I can analyze.
The first thing that can be said is that the most powerful party in Colombia was created spontaneously with more than 11 million votes, the anti-Petro party. It is ironic that this movement, which brings together the entire radical left in Colombia and which for more than 15 years has dedicated itself with great success to creating the monster of uribismo in order to mount itself politically in anti-uribismo, is now the victim of its own invention.
Petro and his friends, from famous columnists and journalists, judges, intellectuals, radical left politicians, NGO directors, former guerrillas, and many others, mounted the anti-Uribe narrative almost from the beginning of Álvaro Uribe’s government. This was consolidated and received great oxygen with an unexpected ally, former president Juan Manuel Santos.
This narrative that ignores the great successes of those 8 years of government and that carefully illuminated, exaggerated and distorted shortcomings and errors managed to create that block of 8.5 million voters who today are undoubtedly a powerful political force. What they did not visualize is that by building with a permanent language of hate, of destruction of the other, of cancellation of the opponent, of destructive narcissism, they were creating an opposing force that was as or more powerful.
The truth is that this message of hatred and destruction is born from the violent origins of that left, armed origins, where the elimination of the opposite is part of the dialectic. If Petro were a Lagos de Chile, he would have won in the first round because here there is no fear of the left, there is fear of the social, economic and institutional destruction that Petro poses today for Colombia. If we also add the mirror of Venezuela, the scenario was complete for what happened last Sunday.
The first warning bell was the plebiscite vote for peace. Something that should have united a country, a peace process, divided it. Those who had different views of the negotiation were excluded and branded as enemies of peace. That included millions of victims who were not necessarily Uribistas as they tried to make it appear. They were citizens who had suffered that violence, who had come out ahead, but the discourse and everything built in that process left them out. The narrative had to be black or white, but there was a lot of gray that was expressed that voting day. Which country votes NO in a plebiscite on peace? The speech of exclusion, of hate, of destruction only became stronger from that moment with one more ingredient, now that half or more of the population were murderous warmongers.
A second expression occurred two years later with the election of Iván Duque. The votes that elected him in the second round were anti-Petro votes. Yes, an important part of Uribe and conservative votes, but without that anti-Petro voter he would never have won. What’s more, if Sergio Fajardo goes to the second round, he would also have defeated Petro for precisely the same reason.
Duque’s four years consolidated both blocs. Petro and his friends reinforced his strategy and the erosion of the government and his unpopularity finally made them see light at the end of the tunnel. Victory was within his grasp. But they never saw that this anti-Petro bloc grow. Not even the uribistas saw it and thought that this campaign was the same as 2018. Going to the second round against Petro was enough. But not anymore. For many reasons, the government had generated such political erosion that now what there was was a great feeling of profound change but with a common root: change but without Petro.
When I heard a humble shopkeeper tell me I want change but I don’t want my business to be destroyed, I realized that this block against Petro went much deeper and that his speech of hate and destruction had permeated many sectors of society that should be related.
And the engineer Rodolfo Hernández appears. What is an accident. Fajardo for being part of all those fights so to speak, of the last decade, he was already worn out. Just like Uribism, which today pays the cost of his mistakes and of 20 years of political battle. But the wear and tear of Petro’s speech also showed its teeth. He put a roof on it. From 2018 to 2022 he managed to increase his number of votes by 400 thousand. Almost nothing.
And the electoral results of the first round are given. Petro 8.5 million. Hernández 6 million and Federico Gutiérrez 5 million. Petro hits the ceiling, Hernández collects an immense feeling of change and the conservative sectors in their money, as we say in Colombia, 5 million. The sum of everything that is clearly against Petro is almost two million votes difference. And the antiuribismo discourse is over because their opponent in the second round embodies that feeling of change. Conservative votes come alone to where Hernández is, even if this candidate has positions that they do not like. But he does not propose to destroy the system. He doesn’t have hate speech. He does not have that ballast that turned Petro into a national figure but that now passes him the collection account for him.
A terrible campaign is coming against the engineer Rodolfo Hernández. Already Petro and his henchmen began. But what this radical left does not understand is that the fear they used to finish off the enemy ended up burying them. If the Colombian left wants to break through at the national level, because they have it in a great way at the local level since the mayors of 3 of the 4 main cities in Colombia are from the left, they must change their hate speech and build. You must build bridges and understand that the voter must be excited, but with concrete realities that do not destroy the other.
For the Colombian left today, and the best example is Petro, the political struggle is zero sum. What I gain you lose. There is no win-win and the Colombian voter, the second oldest democracy on the continent after the United States, is not stupid or brutish like many in Petrismo today in social networks and columns in national and international newspapers shout at the top of their lungs.
We’ll see what happens. But the lesson is given. And by the way, this also serves a right that today must return to its battle quarters to see what happened, where it went wrong and what it has to change to face the challenges of the future, which are many.
* The author was Vice President of Colombia between 2002 and 2010.
Published in Infobae.com Tuesday, May 31, 2022.
“The opinions published here are the sole responsibility of their author.”
