Why Is Colombia's Electorate Divided?

Colombian pollsters are forecasting no candidate will win an absolute majority in Sunday’s contested presidential election. They see incumbent President Juan Manuel Santos forced into a runoff ballot in mid-June with the heir to his biggest rival, former president Álvaro Uribe. In recent weeks, Oscar Iván Zuluaga, a former finance minister in Uribe’s administration, has virtually eliminated the lead Santos maintained for much of the campaign in a race marked by allegations of corruption and dirty tricks. Last week, as a legally mandated poll blackout was imposed, both frontrunners stood neck-to-neck, each holding less than 30 percent of the vote, with the balance split between five small-party candidates. Why is Colombia’s electorate divided?

A centrist, market-friendly technocrat, President Santos came to power in a landslide victory in 2010. During his four-year term the country has enjoyed 4.6 percent average growth, record-low inflation and declining unemployment rates. Yet Santos has had trouble maintaining a positive approval rating. The public perception is that the president´s energies are too focused on putting an end to a decades-old leftist insurgency rather than addressing the urgent demands for new infrastructure and basic goods and services by Colombia’s burgeoning middle class.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and millions displaced as a result of Colombia’s 50-year old war, a conflict rooted in the Cold War and prolonged by the rebels’ lucrative partnership with drug traffickers and a thriving kidnapping and extortion industry. With a force that once peaked at 20,000 fighters, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Colombia’s main rebel force, began losing ground during the 2002-2010 administration of Uribe, whose campaign for democratic security received critical funding and military assistance from the United States. Relentless military pressure on the rebels decimated their senior ranks and reduced their forces to a handful of pockets around the country, where a rugged geography makes it difficult for the government to establish a presence.

Still, the rebels remain a destabilizing force whose actions cost Colombia close to 1 percent of annual gross domestic product growth. This is why Santos has staked his legacy on reaching an agreement with the FARC at peace talks hosted by Cuba and supported by the international community. Last week the government and FARC negotiators announced they had agreed on terms for the rebels to end involvement in the drug trade, an accord that removes one of the biggest obstacles to a final agreement. The announcement was expected to give Santos’ re-election bid a major boost.

However, a peace agreement is not at the top of the list for many Colombians who, over the course of several decades, have grown resigned to violence in the countryside, and are wary of the compromises needed to ensure the insurgents' reintegration into society. The recent polls reflect that skepticism, as well as what the voters perceive as president Santos’ distant government style. This stands in sharp contrast to Uribe´s brand of folksy politics; throughout his eight years in office, he was constantly on tour and would sit down to listen to people’s requests during hours-long town hall meetings.

For his part, opposition candidate Zuluaga rejects the peace negotiations with the FARC and has already announced that, if elected, he would immediately suspend the talks in their current form. His popularity is in large part a reflection of the support a sizeable part of the population feels towards Uribe, Zuluaga’s political mentor, who remains politically active and uses the power of his three million Twitter followers for campaign purposes.

Santos and Zuluaga share a common free-market economic agenda and there is little doubt that, regardless of who wins, Colombia will remain a key United States ally in the region. From an investor’s perspective, the elections will not change much, as all economic projections take into account the corrosive effect of the domestic conflict, which has been part of the country’s DNA for more than 50 years.

In recent weeks, the campaign language has become increasingly vitriolic, with each side accusing the other of receiving funding from dubious sources and adopting illegal eavesdropping techniques. Despite the recent acrimony, Colombians would be wise to reflect on the fact that the alleged dirty tricks exposed in mid-campaign may be a sign of considerably improved political ground rules. After all, it was just 25 years ago that in a similar electoral race, three presidential candidates, among them the then frontrunner, were brutally murdered as part of a vast, drug-sponsored conspiracy. Colombian society’s shock and indignation at the most recent revelations is a sign of the public’s new questioning of political leadership, and that can only lead to things getting better.

This article was originally published in U.S. News & World Report's online opinion section.