Former Colombian defense minister Juan Manuel Santos is the favorite to win the May 30 presidential elections in the first poll taken after a high court ruled President Alvaro Uribe could not run for a third term.
Santos was backed by 23 percent of those surveyed in a Ipsos Napoleon Franco poll, while opposition Senator Gustavo Petro had 11 percent, with former Medellin mayor Sergio Fajardo and former senator German Vargas Lleras at 9 percent each.
With the race wide open after the constitutional court on Feb. 26 blocked a referendum asking voters if they wanted to allow Uribe to run again, candidates are competing for Uribe’s endorsement. Santos said he has it. Uribe, speaking yesterday in Montevideo, said he was committed to the continuation of his policies, not any single candidate.
“I’m not a man who gives winks,” Uribe told reporters at the inauguration of Uruguayan President Jose “Pepe” Mujica. “I am a man not of subtle signaling, but of soulful engagement.”
Whoever wins is unlikely to depart from Uribe’s policies that are credited with bringing in as much as US$50 billion in foreign investment since 2002 and cutting the murder rate by 95 percent, said Alberto Bernal, head of emerging-market research at Bulltick Securities Corp in Miami.
Still, Santos is the candidate most closely identified with Uribe himself. As defense minister, the Harvard University-educated Santos helped orchestrate the 2008 rescue of 15 guerrilla hostages, including French-Colombian Ingrid Betancourt, and the attack on a rebel camp inside Ecuador that killed the rebels’ second in command, Raul Reyes.
Santos may be vulnerable to criticism over some of the Uribe government’s perceived problems, said Aldo Civico, director of the Center for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University.
“In politics it’s always bad to present yourself as the copy of someone else, because between the copy and the original, people prefer the original,” Civico said.
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