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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS