The president of Colombia, Iván Duque, together with the mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López, this Friday in Bogotá.Presidencia de Colombia / EFE / Presidencia de Colombia
Almost four years ago, Álvaro Uribe presented to Colombia who would be its next president. "He will know how to win the affection of the hearts of Colombians," he predicted, putting his hands on the politician, almost a stranger to most. Duque, recently anointed by the man who has been marking Colombian politics since he became president in 2002, declared then that his greatest desire would be to continue "consolidating Uribism." That day the figure of President Duque was born, who since then has tried to be seen as an independent politician from the shadow of Uribe. But a year after his term ends, the intentions of one and the dreams of another are no more than a page in the newspaper library.Since the first months of his term, Duque has had low approval ratings and Uribism languishes like never before in two decades. Colombians are already looking behind the president's back in search of what is next.
The first president who came to power without the FARC, after the peace process led by his predecessor Juan Manuel Santos, celebrates three years of government this Saturday in a kind of no man's land and without a clear legacy. His tenure, like that of other world leaders, will be marked by the pandemic. Celebrated at the international level for its iron position in the crisis in Venezuela and the decision to legalize about a million citizens of the neighboring country, the withdrawal of its great political commitment, the tax reform that aroused enormous social discontent and ignited the protests in the street this May, ended up staining the image of the president in the interior of the country.
In the words of Eugénie Richard, an expert in political marketing from the Universidad Externado de Colombia, "Duque never had a connection with Colombians," unlike his mentor.
"It has failed in insecurity, the cost of living and purchasing power and unemployment," he adds.
Universidad Javeriana professor Jorge Restrepo summarizes his mandate: "It is a government of lost opportunities."
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At the beginning of the end, the Executive is now working on a very decaffeinated tax reform proposal. The text does not touch the middle classes, the fuse that lit the riots in May, and it has a high probability of going forward, but it lacks the depth to solve the structural problems of the Colombian economy. That will be up to the next president.
Among his successes, Duque had the courage to launch at the beginning of this year a regularization for about a million undocumented Venezuelans, an unprecedented decision in the region and perhaps his greatest seal at the head of the Government.
The pandemic gave him a boost to take the lead in crisis management and earned him his highest popularity ratings in March 2020, when he multiplied his public appearances with a daily television show, but failed to sustain the momentum.
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The president has navigated these three years amid real and internal political opposition. His figure was born in the same way as that of Santos, from the hand of the powerful Uribe, but unlike his predecessor he never broke the moorings. "This government is going to be a fairly mediocre government, indecisive, that failed to define its own line because of Uribe's shadow," explains historian Jorge Orlando Melo. The relationship between the two, without ever staging a break, has cooled to the point that Uribe, in the heat of the protests, came to publicly draw his attention on several occasions. "A thousand times we beg the Government not to present this tax reform like this," he said in an interview with
Semana
magazine
.
The president's attempts to move away from the more radical wing of the Democratic Center to look at the political center have cost him the rejection of his party, with figures who have exerted constant opposition against his administration.
That, adds Restrepo, and its inability to sign large coalitions or a government of dialogue and national unity, have turned it into "a fairly lonely government."
The unknown of the candidates
The look is already going to May 2022, when the next general elections will be held.
In Colombia the Duque Government is already considered amortized.
Political actors take a position, although unknowns dominate the electoral scene.
At this point there is only one clear candidate: Gustavo Petro.
The leftist leader, with populist overtones, who has already entered the second round against Duque, is for many the great rival to beat. His rise to power, however, runs up against a deeply conservative society - in Colombia there has never been a left-wing president - and the nature of Petro himself. “The thing on the left is not so easy at the moment. Unfortunately they have a leader who is a very particular person, who makes many mistakes, constantly shoots himself in the foot, ”explains political scientist Sandra Borda. The last, last week, when on Twitter he argued that vaccines are not useful for the delta variant of the coronavirus. A controversy that he tried to settle by putting on the second dose and tweeting an image without a shirt, which some compared with the well-known photos of Valdimir Putin with his chest exposed,and the message: “Second dose. Get vaccinated now. The Delta has already arrived in the country ”.
Anti-Petrism is so strong that even assuming that the left-wing leader goes into a second round, few predict that he can prevent the union of all the other political actors around the other candidate.
Professor Restrepo does not think that this is his moment either: "Petro's anti-company, anti-fiscal stability discourse calls into question monetary discipline, that is anathema in Colombia."
All the analysts and experts consulted consider that the scenario opens a political opportunity for a candidate from the center and for the classic Colombian parties - such as the conservative and the liberal - that have been overshadowed by Uribism for years.
However, so far, there is not a single clear aspirant.
The key, once again, will revolve around the real wear and tear of Uribismo.
Opinions vary.
There are those who, like the political scientist and analyst León Valencia, consider him dead: "The Duque government buries Uribism."
Those who see him very much alive, like Orlando Melo: "Uribe's candidate goes to the second round safely."
And those who believe that anything is possible, like Restrepo: "We have discounted Uribe many times in the past, but he has a great capacity to reinvent himself."
The political scientist Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín sums up the general state of uncertainty in the country: "Really at this moment it is like tossing a coin with many faces in the air."
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