Colombia elected its first left-wing president, senator and former guerrilla Gustavo Petro, who defeated independent millionaire Rodolfo Hernández in a tense runoff disputed on Sunday.
Petro, 62, won the election with a 3.2 percentage point lead over the eccentric tycoon, who quickly conceded defeat.
The senator and former guerrilla surpassed his rival by 716,201 votes, according to the scrutiny of 99.4% of the votes.
“Today is a holiday for the people. Let him celebrate the first popular victory (…) it is the day of the streets and squares, ”the president-elect wrote on Twitter when celebrating his victory.
In a convention center in downtown Bogotá, his followers exploded with joy.
“I celebrate because we are finally going to have a change, this is something that the territories expected (…) this shows that there is hope, Lusimar Asprilla, a 25-year-old African academic, told AFP.
Colombia thus enters a new political era without a government of the traditional parties, defeated in the first round in which the leftist party also won.
The two candidates arrived at the ballot tied in voting intention. A very tight result was feared that would trigger protests due to the suspicions of fraud that Petro fueled during the day.
The leftist will succeed conservative Iván Duque as of August 7 for a four-year term. The environmentalist leader Francia Márquez will also make history after being elected as the first Afro-descendant vice president of Colombia.
Macron’s defeat
Meanwhile, President Emmanuel Macron’s center alliance yesterday lost its absolute majority in Parliament, given the progress of the leftist front and the spectacular rise of the extreme right in the legislative elections.
“The slap in the face,” headlined the newspaper Libération along with an image of the liberal president, who will have to find new allies in Parliament to be able to carry out his reform program, such as delaying the retirement age from 62 to 65 years.
According to the projections of the Elabe institute at 10:40 p.m. (20:40 GMT), the alliance ¡Juntos! de Macron would obtain between 230 and 245 seats in the Assembly (lower house), the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nupes, left) between 150 and 160 and the National Association (extreme right), from 85 to 90.
With an absolute majority in 289 seats, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne considered these results a “risk” for the country and promised to seek “a majority of action” from Monday. “There is no alternative to this union to guarantee stability,” she said.
Although negotiation is common in most democracies in the absence of an absolute majority in Parliament, the new legislature can become a headache for the ruling party in France, accustomed to the steamroller.
The victory of the PP
Yesterday, the conservative Popular Party won an absolute majority in the elections in Andalusia, once a bastion of the left, dealing a heavy blow to the socialists of the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, a year and a half before the general elections.
With almost all the votes counted, the PP had won the 58 deputies that will allow its candidate Juan Manuel Moreno to revalidate his presidency, and govern alone, well ahead of the 30 achieved by the socialists of the PSOE, and more than all the left-wing deputies together.
In this way, the PP will not need the far-right party Vox in the executive, as it happens in Castilla y León, depriving the left of an electoral argument and validating the commitment to moderation of the new national conservative leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo .
KNOW MORE In Andalusia.
The Socialist Party (PSOE) achieved a result lower than that of the 2018 elections (33), its historical minimum, when it lost regional power for the first time since the establishment of autonomy in 1982, after a corruption scandal.
Paris.
Although Macron loses his absolute majority, the first left-wing front in 25 years – radical left, environmentalists, communists and socialists – is far from imposing Jean-Luc Mélenchon as prime minister.
Colombia.
The Colombian military will have to swear allegiance to a former guerrilla in a country traumatized by a six-decade conflict with far-left rebels. After a conflictive mandate as head of the Bogota mayor’s office, Petro will have to prove that he is capable of working as a team to govern the country and reach consensus.
