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Last Sunday’s elections showed that, while there may be some “Uribe fatigue” in Colombia, the two-term president remains enormously popular. The nation may be weary of polarization and scandal, but it is also eternally grateful to a leader who succeeded in bringing the country back from the brink. Uribismo secured nearly 63 percent of the vote.
The beneficiary of this sentiment, of course, was Juan Manuel Santos of the U Party, who is in a formidable position to take the oath on office on August 7th. The pollsters and commentators, who predicted a virtual tie between Santos and Antanus Mockus of the Green Party, got it wrong. Mockus supporters have to be demoralized after Sunday’s results. It will be nearly impossible to rebound before the June 20 runoff. Colombians, like everyone else, prefer to go with a clear winner, who in this case is Santos.
How did Santos defy the predictions and win by such a substantial margin? There are a number of reasons, including the underrepresentation of rural areas (Uribista strongholds) in the surveys and Mockus’s gaffes in debates and interviews.
The main reason, however, is simply that many Colombians, after flirting with the Mockus candidacy and the appealing message he conveyed, were afraid to vote for such a novice in security and foreign policy questions. In the end, Mockus’s eccentricities were not sufficiently reassuring to a nation that, despite much progress, is still worried about both internal and external threats. Santos’s pledge that, with him in charge, Colombians would be able to sleep peacefully at night, proved very effective.
The elections not only showed the enduring strength of Uribismo, but also highlighted two other facts that Santos should bear in mind as he prepares to assume the presidency. The first is that although Mockus may not reach the Casa de Narino, he is a real phenomenon and tapped into a national sensibility for clean government, adherence to the rule of law, and political cooperation. In his speech Sunday night, Santos seemed to acknowledge what Mockus represented and wisely called for national unity.
The second fact is the strikingly poor results for Colombia’s two main political parties, the Liberals and Conservatives. In this respect, Colombia fits with a regional trend of weakening of traditional party systems, but it remains unclear what the new party structure will look like.
No one doubts Santos’s intelligence. He is widely recognized for his effective management of three key ministries under three different Colombian presidents. More than Uribe, he is sensitive to international public opinion, having travelled extensively and held important positions overseas. Despite some concerns about possibly heightened tensions with Ecuador and Venezuela, a Santos administration, aware of how much is at stake economically (particularly with Venezuela), would probably seek to reduce confrontation and deal pragmatically with Colombia’s neighbors.
Santos is well-known in Washington, where he has spent a lot of time and enjoys wide-ranging contacts. In making the case for a stronger bilateral relationship between the United States and Colombia (including approval of the pending free trade agreement), he will still have to respond to concerns, especially among some Democratic members of Congress, about the controversies that marked the Uribe administration. But success in reframing the relationship will have a lot more to do the results of the US congressional elections next November, and the health of the US economy, than on Santos’s powers of persuasion.
