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I've met all three leading and starkly different presidential candidates for the elections coming up this Sunday in Colombia. One of them, Abelardo de la Espriella is a hard right figure. He dubs himself El Tigre I went along to a rally of his on a recent trip, and his supporters run around in Tiger costumes and it's got the feeling of a spectacle. There's pumping music, there's sparks flying on stage. Ivan Cepeda the hard left candidate. His rallies have a very different feel, his standard propers instead, the pages of his speech, which he keeps
his glasses on and reads from very carefully to not miss a word. And then it's Paloma Valencia. She's really the establishment of a center right candidate. She is more centrist, but she's still pretty tough on security. She says she's going to get Colombians their security back. And these three represent really just radically different visions for the future of Colombia. And right now, it's still possible that any of the three could yet be the next president. And before we talk about the three, tell me about Colombian voters, what they're thinking about, what Colombia is like now, what's on the docket. Well, it's a bit of a split picture.
I mean, security is bad and voters are worried about it. Last year, a presidential candidate was assassinated. Cocaine production. And this is a country that produces two thirds of the world's cocaine. That productions at record highs. More civilians have been caught up in the violence than at any point in the last decade. So that's all pretty grim. And that's partly because the governments have been pursuing something called total peace, an attempt to negotiate with all these rebel groups who are really just drug traffickers at this stage, at the same time. And that's basically failed. But the flip side is that voters are feeling quite a bit better about the economy.
Consumptions. Gustavo Petro The current left wing president has hiked the minimum wage by 17%. That's a big feel good for a lot of people. mean, the government is overspending, trying to kind of pump up the economy. It's a bit artificial, if you like. They've be bullying the central bank to lower rates. But of course jam today is popular and that certainly helps the left and their candidate Cepeda So tell me about him. Well, he's, you know, in a good position, arguably a favorite or close to it, partly because of this pumping of the economy by the current government. But he's a very different figure To Gustavo Petro. Petro is a sort of impetuous character.
You know, Cepeda is severe, austere, serious. He likes, you know, Nero collar shirts and cardigans. I met him last year and his pretty unflattering apartment in Bogota, and he kind of almost academic or certainly carefully explained his very left wing views and in particular his unflagging belief in this kind of approach of total peace. He promises to carry on with that despite its failings, you know, and economically, who once you know, really a left wing, slate. He wants land distribution, he wants much greater welfare spending. He even one state procurement to favour kind of small players like community kitchens. And of course some of this alarms business and markets.
But, he tries quite hard and quite clearly to assuage fears and the claims of right wingers that he would somehow turn Colombia into Venezuela, which next door, of course, collapsed into a sort of socialist dictatorship. The right, of course, does not believe him when he says that, or at least much of it doesn't. Well, tell me about then, El Tigre, the candidate from the farthest right Well he's really surging in the polls right now. And, you know, you can see why to some extent, you attend his rallies. And he's just a hyperactive performer. He's kind of, he was dressed in a bulletproof vest, dancing around behind bulletproof glass,
but in a kind of excited way, pumping up the crowd, you know, exhortations. You know, I met him in person as well. He was more soft spoken, but he's never misses a chance to kind of flash a pearly grin with his spectacularly perfect teeth. He said to me, I'm not a populist. I'm popular. But many do compare. Him and his own beard, you know, resembles the populist president of El Salvador Nayib Bukele, just like Bukele he promises to build ten privately run mega prisons in the jungle. He told me that mass trials of gang members are a possibility. He said to me, right now, Columbia doesn't have presence.
It has crime universities. but his past has been criticized. I asked him about, for example, the fact he represented as legal counsel Alex Saab. Alex Saab was a close ally of Nicolas Maduro, that recently ousted president of Venezuela. And Saab has been extradited to the USA on charges of money laundering. Well, this says, you know, this was just a product of my work as a defense lawyer, he says. I did absolutely nothing wrong. And he offers up a sort of slightly gratuitous, a bit sexual analogy to ram home the point.
He points out my wedding ring and says, do I love my wife? He's inquired about my marital fidelity and then followed up by saying, but when I was single, did I used to date a lot of women? And apparently this is all in service of explaining. There's a difference between the role of a defense lawyer and the role of the president. Just like there's a difference between the role of a single man and the role of a married
So at the very least, he's quite a character. lastly, tell me about Paloma Valencia, the establishment candidate. Well that's right. And in some ways she is a total insider. She's the granddaughter of a former Colombian president. She's the political protege of Alvaro Uribe, a very influential, more recent former president. And she's got a team of experienced politicians around more. She is, frankly, in many ways more sensible than the other two candidates. She's tough on security, but she cares about the informal economy.
She wants kind of education to be a priority. And she'd be the first female president for Colombia. But, you know, she didn't seem that optimistic when I met her. she sort of complained about having to run against these populists who promise more or less She, by contrast, says she's trying to sell decency and kind of realism and the road of long work, that looks like a pretty tough sell next to kind of have your cake and eat it. And is it I mean, it sounds that way from here to. Well, she is trailing in the polls at the moment. You know, one thought is that she is from a more traditional party, as you'd expect, and they might be better at getting out the vote when it comes to the crunch.
But I don't think it's looking very good for her right now. So there's a real chance that the runoff, which is likely will be between, you know, Abelardo, this kind of populist, hard right figure, and Ellen Cepeda, a very strongly left wing figure, and that really is an extraordinary polarized choice that Colombians may soon face.
