BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — Colombians milled into voting stations on Sunday in the first round of the South American nation’s presidential election, choosing between candidates with radically diverging visions for the future of peace in a country haunted by decades of armed conflict.
The vote, seen as a referendum on outgoing President Gustavo Petro’s policies, comes 10 years after Colombia signed an historic peace pact with guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
That agreement offered hope to break the nation's vicious cycle of fighting between rebel groups and the government, but violence has roared back since then, coming to a head in the lead-up to the presidential vote. Criminal groups have increasingly launched drone strikes, armed attacks have plagued the race and last June, 39-year-old politician and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay was fatally shot at a political rally.
In a country where the fight for peace has long been a part of the political ethos, the question of how to address the conflict is once again dividing the country.
The vote is expected to send a message to Latin America at a time voters are increasingly ditching leaders that pitched progressive policies — such as providing opportunities to young people and rooting out corruption, and solving security issues — and turned instead to heavy-handed security crackdowns like in El Salvador. It also comes as the Trump administration is placing renewed pressure on the region.
“Today's election isn't just important for us, it's important for all of Latin America,” said Juan Acevedo, a 62-year-old sociologist walking out of a voting station in Colombia's capital on Sunday morning. “Whoever wins here will suggest to the region if progressive policies will continue or if things are going to return to the right.”
Three top candidates have starkly different approaches
There are 11 candidates running for president, but the election has basically turned into a three-horse race.
Senator and peace-builder Ivan Cepeda — a Petro ally — has led the polls and promises to carry on with Petro's “total peace” initiative to negotiate with the country’s remaining rebel groups and sign peace agreements with them in an effort to resolve the persistent crisis.
While the peace plan has largely failed as criminals have taken advantage of ceasefires with the government, Cepeda and Petro have maintained strong support among many because of progressive policies pushed forward under Petro, such as boosting the minimum wage.
Running against Cepeda are Abelardo de la Espriella and Paloma Valencia, who have vowed to come down on armed groups with a heavier hand.
De la Espriella — a bombastic lawyer known as “The Tiger” — has particularly gained traction among voters in recent weeks for pitching himself as an outsider keen on emulating the heavy-handed tactics used in El Salvador’s war on gangs, which sharply reduced gang violence but fueled accusations of human rights abuses.
Both Cepeda and de la Espriella entered voting locations on Sunday surrounded by heavy security personnel who held bullet-proof shields over the politicians' heads.
Valencia is considered the political protege of Colombia's former president and strongman Álvaro Uribe, who governed from 2002 to 2010 with strong support from the United States and whose government beat back FARC rebels in an offensive that took a massive civilian toll.
Both de la Espriella and Valencia have touted their affinity for U.S. President Donald Trump even as he has taken a more aggressive stance toward Latin America than any U.S. president in decades and has pressured nations like Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico to more forcefully crack down on criminal groups.
If no candidate wins at least 50% of the vote — something extremely rare in Colombia — the two top vote-getters will face a runoff in June.
Colombians also disagree on how best to tackle the violence
Maria Eugenia, a 57-year-old seamstress who was stitching a pair of jeans on Friday in downtown Bogotá, Colombia's capital, said she welcomed an all-out offensive on an expanding slate of criminal groups, regardless of the human cost.
While she approved of Petro’s pushes to improve the country's medical infrastructure, she said she was voting for de la Espriella because violence in rural areas of the country has gotten out of hand. She said negotiating peace pacts was simply “rewarding” armed groups.
“Of course, whenever you come down with a heavy hand, there’s always going to be debate,” she said. “But some people are going to have to fall to clean up what needs to be cleaned.”
Others, like Acevedo, the sociologist strolling out of a polling station on Sunday with packs of other voters, said a security crackdown like the one promoted by de la Espriella would only be returning to past military campaigns that he said only reinforced Colombia's cycle of violence.
He said he planned to vote for Cepeda, adding that while the government hasn't done a perfect job — failing to pass ambitious reforms and follow through on promises to reduce violence — it was better to continue pushing forward with their political coalition's efforts to take a different approach in addressing the country's violence.
He added that his main critique of Petro's administration was the power grabs made by criminal groups as they negotiated with the government. He said he hoped that if Cepeda won, he would strike a better balance between negotiating peace and maintaining control over those groups.
“We're a country that has lived through 60 years of conflict,” Acevedo said. “The danger here is that we return to the times where everyone is saying that the only way to solve our problems is with bullets and more war.”
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