Colombia: Presidential Election Results Yield Surprises

Envigado, Colombia -- Colombians voted today and as expected, no presidential candidate achieved fifty percent plus one, thereby triggering a second round of voting June 20. What was totally unexpected was the way in which the vote was split: the U candidate, Juan Manuel Santos took the lion's share with over 46 percent, while the Green party's Antanas Mockus was a distant second with less than 22 percent, contradicting recent opinion polls that had shown in a dead heat with the Santos. Santos won the vote broadly, leading in every province (departamento) except two where Mockus came out on top.

Another surprise is that the Cambio Radical's German Vargas finished third, with just over ten percent, and the Polo Democratico's Gustavo Petro ended in fourth place with about nine percent. Conservative Noemi Sanin placed fifth with 6 percent, despite having placed consistently third in pre-election polls. The liberal party's Rafael Pardo garnered less than five percent of the national vote, thereby depriving him of state's campaign cost subsidy which the top five candidates will enjoy.

Only the top finishers, Santos and Mockus, will be on the ballot in the second round, while the others can now only act as king makers, pledging their voter base to one of the two, although in the end, voters might not follow their candidate's choice. A Santos second round win is almost guaranteed, needing only an additional four percent, while Mockus would have to add almost 29 percent, an almost impossible feat. Any offer Mockus will make to the other parties will sound hollow, while any candidate who walks across the line to the Santos camp is guaranteed real power sharing. Mockus didn't help his cause by loudly rejecting Gustavo Petro's offer of a second round alliance prior to the election, despite the fact that the Polo party was the surest bet to align with him. The second round looks to be a simple formality, only serving to reaffirm Santos' resounding win.

What caused the Mockus collapse? Perhaps it was the sum of his many imprudent statements made to the press, including his promise to raise taxes to pay for social programs, made just last week and after the last opinion poll. Perhaps cool heads prevailed today, many Colombians thinking twice about putting an eccentric idealist at the helm of a country still immersed in a bloody battle with terrorists and drug traffickers, preferring to continue with the party that has allowed them to enjoy an unprecedented level of security, letting them continue with their Democratic Security program. It's not a coincidence that all candidates promised to continue Democratic Security, but in the final analysis, who can best run the program except those who started it, Santos having been an important player in his role as defense minister under outgoing president Alvaro Uribe?

Perhaps the most telling evidence on the effectiveness of the U party's relentless war on illegal armed groups is that today's election unfurled without incident, Colombians turning-out to vote in record numbers. No bombings or shootings as in past elections, although the police did detect and disarm three car bombs. The electoral registrar's system performed flawlessly this time, ballot counts rolling in quickly, with almost all reporting within two hours after polls closed at four pm local time, unlike the recent congressional and senatorial elections which took days to tally and were marred by controversy.

Sources:

Election results from the Registradura Nacional de Colombia

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