On May 30 Colombia will hold elections to decide who will govern the country the next four years. Last February, after the Constitutional Court of Colombia banned President Álvaro Uribe from seeking a second reelection, it appeared that the race would be defined by voters choosing among two candidates who sought to present themselves as the best guarantors of Uribe’s democratic security legacy: former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos from the Party of the “U” and former ambassador to the United Kingdom Noemí Sanín from the Conservative Party.
Along comes Antanas Mockus as candidate of the Green Party. The son of Lithuanian immigrants, his political career began after he was forced to leave his position as Dean of the National University of Colombia, following an episode in which he pulled his pants off in order to quiet down a riotous student audience. Since then he has been elected twice as mayor of Bogota, from 1995 to 1997 and from 2001 to 2003. The ultimate outsider, his popularity has been bolstered by his unconventional initiatives and seemingly incorruptible character. Joined by the popular former Mayor of Medellín Sergio Fajardo as vice-presidential candidate, Mockus’s impressive rise in this presidential campaign has put into question what was thought to be an inevitable outcome of the race. He is now leading most of the polls and is a shoe in to compete in the second round should he not achieve a majority in the first.
Mónica Pachón holds a Masters degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Oxford and a Doctorate in Political Science from the University of California at San Diego. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of Los Andes in Bogotá as well as Director of Congreso Visible, a university affiliated organization that aims at “generating a bridge for citizens to communicate with their representatives”. She is an expert on Latin American executive-legislative relations and comparative institutional design. In this WAFP interview, she discusses what Colombian political magazine Semana has deemed “ one of the most exciting campaigns” in Colombia’s history.
WAFP: How is this upcoming presidential election in Colombia any different from previous ones?
MP: This time the president will not be the candidate of one of the traditional Colombian parties, as has been happening since 2002. The polls are also signaling that there will be an increase in participation and that Antanas Mockus, one of the candidates leading in the polls, would not have significant support in Congress if he was elected. Neither has Mockus established pre-election alliances, another common feature of previous leading candidacies. The campaigns have really been using web social networks, which had not happened before, and television debates and polls have been more frequent. This has also been a much shorter campaign because its launching was dependant on the Constitutional Court ruling on the referendum.
WAFP: After the Constitutional Court ruling it was commonly stated that this election would be a referendum on the mandate of President Álvaro Uribe. Even if Uribe could not be candidate himself, Juan Manuel Santos was by and large perceived as his chosen successor. Is a referendum on Uribismo still the defining issue of this election?
MP: The campaign debate seemed to be at the hands of the two parties in the government coalition, the Party of the “U” and the Conservative Party. However this was only the first stage which ended with the legislative elections. The alliance between Fajardo and Mockus has led the campaigns to revolve around the issue of renewal, with Mockus and Fajardo being seen as the uncorrupted candidates and Santos as the establishment candidate. Santos has tried to reframe the debate and position security and showing that he is the best possible continuator of Uribe’s policies as the main issues but Mockus has refused to comply and has persisted in promoting other values. I believe it can be said that this campaign had been more about candidate traits and charisma than about policy issues.
WAFP: The advance of Green Party candidate Antanas Mockus in the polls has engendered the possibility of a Colombian president being elected without having a significant support in Congress. In the event of a Mockus victory could Colombia experience a governability crisis?
MP: There have been presidents who have not had a majority in Congress before and this has not necessarily led to governability crises. Nonetheless, it is essential that Mockus explains what would be his strategy to pass initiatives in Congress. Until now, he has been ambiguous and has only noted he would discuss with arguments and not by offering perks. His declarations would seem to imply that coalitions in Congress are a bad thing.
WAFP: The Conservative Party candidate Noemí Sanín has not been able to awaken the same enthusiasm among voters as other women in Latin American politics like Michelle Bachelet, Dilma Rousseff or even Cristina Fernández when she campaigned for president. Why?
MP: The Conservative Party is heading towards this election as a divided organization. Sanín has been unable to position herself as the candidate of political renewal and has not even taken advantage of the fact that she is the only woman in the presidential race. A lot of those voters who value new ways of doing politics are now supporting Mockus. Moreover, relatively speaking, Sanín has not performed well at the debates and she has still not managed to rally the Conservative vote that initially supported her rival Andrés Felipe Arias.
Sanín has been working for different governments with different political orientations and this has eroded her image because public opinion in Colombia has perceived this as opportunistic behavior. She is not the acknowledged successor of Uribe, something that Santos has benefited from. Many Conservative voters who support President Uribe are choosing the candidate that most resembles him and that candidate is Santos.
WAFP: Colombia’s traditional parties, the Liberal and the Conservative parties, are polling remarkably low in these elections whereas new parties like the Party of the “U” and the Green Party are leading in voter preferences. Are we witnessing the emergence of a new party system in Colombia?
MP: Yes. Since the electoral reform of 2003 we have seen a significant change in the party system, which can now be considered a multi party system. In addition to the traditional parties, we have a leftist party that clearly opposes the Uribe government and one that has been created to defend his works, the Party of the “U”.
Yet I think that the traditional parties still have a crucial role to play. In the Colombian Congress the second and the third party with most seats are still the Liberals and the Conservatives. The party with the largest representation is the Party of the “U” but this party has to demonstrate if it can survive after the end of the Uribe era.
Another point to be made is that the emergence of new parties- like Radical Change and the “U”- does not necessarily mean that these are giving voice to new policy alternatives because their ranks are being filled with politicians who come from the traditional parties.
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