2023: the year that will define whether the left consolidates its power

If 2022 marked history by the election of a left-wing president, the first elected from outside the bipartisanship, 2023 will define whether that political turn is established and the country is left with a political system in which the left is a majority force, or close to the majority, with clear roots in the local sphere and a State with a greater presence in society and the economy.

Politically, the year that is beginning will have two major processes.

One of them is that of the elections on October 29, in which the 1,102 mayors and 12,072 councilors, the 32 governors and 418 deputies to the departmental assemblies, and the 6,513 councilors of the local administrative boards that exist in the municipalities are renewed. most populated, which are divided into localities.

These 20,137 positions are the backbone of the country's political structure, as they form the cadres of the parties and movements.

For these elections, in addition to the two historical parties (Liberal and Conservative), their traditional successors (La U, Cambio Radical, the uribista Centro Democrático) and parties with a long history such as the Democratic Pole (left) and the Green Alliance (center ), there remains the big question of what will happen to the Historical Pact, the coalition of parties and movements that endorsed Gustavo Petro to be elected president.

The answer is not obvious, despite the victory of the Pact, and the fact that it has substantial seats in the Senate -XX of the 108 senators- and in the House of Representatives -XXX of the XX representatives-.

The Pact is not a party.

It does not have statutes, it does not have its own budget, it cannot grant guarantees.

The parties that came together to create it in 2021 can do it, together or apart: the Polo, the Patriotic Union, the MAIS, ADA and Colombia Humana.

The question is whether they will come together again as a united left that also includes center-left forces.

In principle it would make sense because, in general, a united left has fared better.

After decades of divisions, at the beginning of the last century a confluence was achieved in the Alternative Democratic Pole.

That union was crossed by tensions and bickering, but unified by the opposition to the then powerful president Álvaro Uribe.

Confronting him, and united in the Pole, they managed to have the second vote in the presidential elections in 2006 and to elect mayors of Bogotá in 2003 and 2007. It broke just when Uribe left power because Petro left the Pole with several allies to launch himself ( and win) that same mayoralty in 2011. The disintegration of forces was growing.

The divided left lost that mayoralty in 2015 and the lesson helped for greater unity in 2018 and especially in 2022.

But it is not clear that this possibility will be repeated now, because in these elections the incentives to do so are less.

The alliance in 2022 came about largely thanks to the fact that the figure of Gustavo Petro brought together almost the entire left (on the outside are the Dignidad party, of former senator Jorge Enrique Robledo and a critic of Petro; and Comunes, the party of ex-combatants from the FARC, which the Pact did not accept in its ranks) as a real option to finally obtain power.

By 2023 there is no similar figure that brings together nationally.

In a country with a weak party system due to its low representation, now further weakened by the explosion of formations that have gone from less than 10 to more than 25 in a few years, there are hundreds of local elections rather than regional elections.

The regional bases of the Historical Pact and the alliances of the campaign and now the Petro government with political sectors that are not from the left have created tensions and discomfort.

The possibility of gaining local power with the support of the National Government also creates internal tensions.

For example, the possibility that former Polo senator Alexánder López is a candidate for the Governor of Valle del Cauca, one of the most powerful and visible in the country, has been questioned because he would compete with the forces of Dilian Francisca Toro, a baroness that is an ally of the National Government.

Unity is not impossible, and Pact figures such as representative Alirio Uribe, who comes from Polo, have talked about maintaining the coalition, looking for single lists and unity candidacies, and thus aiming to win more than half of the mayoralties.

that process,

The other great space that will define the consolidation of the left is the development of the policies of the Petro government.

Elected with a program that promises a greater presence of the State in social and economic relations, and with a battery of pending reforms, the Government prioritized in its first semester obtaining the money to achieve its goals, through the tax reform, and raising the basis of his peace policy.

Neither of them was especially new for Colombia, although the ambition of both shows a desire for change.

Now come the reforms that promise to mark the ideological stamp of the Government more: a social security system and reinforce with more presence of the State in its proposals for health and pensions;

Greater worker protection at work.

If they are able to move forward, the Colombian state will move closer to proposals traditionally linked to the social democratic left.

It is not only the legal reforms that determine this character, but also - and perhaps above all - the public policies that it develops.

From the agrarian reform that he proposes with mechanisms such as the delivery of goods that belonged to the mafia or the purchase of land from ranchers, to the realization of extensions in the subsidy systems for the poorest.

2023 should see the landing of the first clearly left-wing measures.

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