A once-tight presidential race threatened to turn into a rout yesterday, with polls showing a huge lead for former Colombian defense minister Juan Manuel Santos.
Santos, who oversaw a major weakening of leftist rebels, had a 37-point advantage in pre-election polls over former Bogota Mayor Antanas Mockus, who was neck-and-neck with him in some surveys before a series of gaffes torpedoed his eccentric campaign.
Santos won 47 percent of the vote in the May 30 first round — just shy of the simple majority needed for victory. Since then, he has gained the endorsement of most of Colombia’s political establishment.
Santos, a 58-year-old economist, promises to build on the security gains of outgoing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who remains hugely popular, but is barred from seeking a third consecutive term.
The former defense chief also may benefit from the military’s recent rescue of three police officers and an army sergeant who had been held for nearly 12 years by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country’s main rebel band.
However, he is also trying to broaden his appeal by vowing to help the poor in a nation notorious for income inequality, where more than four of every 10 of its 44 million people live on less than US$2 a day.
“I’m going to give priority to the social aspect, to employment, to the fight against poverty since I don’t need to prioritize security,” Santos said in a pre-election interview.
Colombia’s annual per-capita social spending is about US$400, less than half that of Mexico or Chile.
Mockus’ clean-government campaign, a steamrolling sensation three months ago, lost its luster after he won just 21 percent of the vote in the first round.
The Green Party candidate, a former university rector and son of Lithuanian immigrants, made a series of comments that led Colombians to question his ability to manage the military and foreign relations of a country still mired in a half-century-old conflict with guerrillas.
Mockus at one point suggested Colombia should dissolve its military, then backtracked. He also suggested he would have no choice but to extradite Uribe if an Ecuadorean court convicted him of wrongdoing in a 2008 cross-border raid. In fact, presidents can deny extradition requests.
The mathematician and philosopher also alienated voters by promising a tax increase.
“The general sensation that he leaves is that he is not as well prepared to lead the country as Santos,” Andes University political scientist Arlene Tickner said.
Being a political outsider was Mockus’ strength — but also proved his weakness, said Michael Shifter, president of the Washington think tank Inter-American Dialogue.
“He challenged politics as usual, but also needed to play the political game to build support. He wasn’t willing or able to do that,” Shifter said.
Santos, who was educated in the US, is a Colombian political blueblood despite making his first run for elected office. He was a Cabinet minister in three administrations and is a great-nephew of a president whose family long ran the country’s leading newspaper, El Tiempo.
Santos may have benefited politically from a government welfare payment program called Accion Social that grew under Uribe from 320,000 recipient families to 2.2 million.
However, Santos said no one can prove a gain in votes for him or other candidates from his National Unity party — which dominated March 14 legislative elections — resulted from Accion Social’s growth.
“People are very grateful — above all in the most poor sectors — that we have decreased the violence, from which the poor suffer most,” he said.
Indeed, Santos has polled better among Colombia’s poor than its rich.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in