Gustavo Petro, ex-guerilla member, bids for a left shift in Colombia’s presidency

Record ID: 1674500

  • Title: Gustavo Petro, ex-guerilla member, bids for a left shift in Colombia’s presidency
  • Date: 27th May 2022
  • Summary: BOGOTA. COLOMBIA (FILE - MARCH 29, 2022) (REUTERS) PERSON FILMING PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE ON PHONE PETRO ARRIVING AT DEBATE (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) COLOMBIA'S PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, GUSTAVO PETRO, SAYING: "There must be a recovery program to balance nature and economy. We intend to revitalize the Amazon Forest through an international, annual 500-million-dollar carbon bonds fund. Allowing hereditary family concessions to revitalize the Amazon Forest. We'll permit ourselves to leave behind the hydrocarbon oil economy to build agriculture within the agrarian frontier and agribusiness, in a way in which water is the economy's guiding principle and not a factor of its destruction." SIERRA DE LA MACARENA NATURAL PARK, META, COLOMBIA (FILE - SEPTEMBER 3, 2020) (REUTERS) AERIAL FOOTAGE OF DEFORESTED AREAS DETAIL OF TREE STUMP RUBIALES, META, COLOMBIA (FILE - JANUARY 23, 2013) (REUTERS) WORKERS AT OIL PLATFORM DETAIL OF OIL DRILLING WORKERS AT OIL PLATFORM WIDE VIEW OF OIL TANKS BOYACA, COLOMBIA (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF FARMER PLOUGHING LAND FARMER SOWING
  • Embargoed: 10th June 2022 14:20
  • Keywords: Colombia Gustavo Petro Presidential candidate campaign presidential debate
  • Location: VARIOUS LOCATIONS, COLOMBIA
  • City: VARIOUS LOCATIONS, COLOMBIA
  • Country: Colombia
  • Topics: South America / Central America,Government/Politics,Elections/Voting
  • Reuters ID: LVA004101426052022RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: A former member of the M-19 guerrilla group, Gustavo Petro seeks to make the biggest leap in his career by seducing millions of voters to become Colombia's first leftist president.
    The 62-year-old former mayor of Bogota turned his humble beginnings and revolutionary past into a movement for change, attracting both the young and the poor.
    Petro will face six other candidates on Sunday, including the center-right Federico Gutierrez, the independent Rodolfo Hernandez, and the centrist Sergio Fajardo to define the replacement of President Ivan Duque.
    The Historical Pact candidate is the favourite in all the polls and the strong possibility that he will win worries many in a traditionally conservative country, historically governed by right-wing or center-right leaders.
    In his childhood, he aroused the wrath of his Catholic teachers by reading political biographies and works by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, but his good academic performance at a public school allowed him to study economics at a private university with a scholarship.
    His plans to change the economic model by raising taxes on the owners of large tracts of unproductive land and moving away from economic dependence on oil and coal to make way for clean energy are scaring investors and businessmen.
    Although he was never a fighter, he is haunted by his years of militancy in the disappeared guerrilla group M-19, which stormed the Palace of Justice in downtown Bogota in 1985 in an attack that left almost a hundred dead.
    The violent past of the rebel group has often been used by his opponents to attack him.
    He was arrested in 1985 by the Army for possession of weapons and was in jail for 18 months, during which he claims he was tortured by the military.
    Petro's election in 2011 as mayor of Bogota, Colombia's second-highest post after the presidency, was seen as proof that politics was the way forward for guerrilla movements like the FARC, which eventually demobilized in 2016 and formed a political party.
    His eventual victory could ensure continuity for the peace agreement that ended five decades of armed conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), but which has angered millions who oppose ex-rebels holding political office instead of going to jail.
    Petro promises that the fourth-largest economy in Latin America will be inclusive, with a public banking system that guarantees low-cost credit to small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, in addition to a free and universal system of access to tertiary education.
    But Colombia faces a weak economy, a new generation of illegal armed groups dedicated to drug trafficking, along with thousands of Venezuelan immigrants seeking work, health and education.
    Critics say his ideas are similar to those of the late Venezuelan socialist leader Hugo Chavez. Petro denies that his proposals include expropriation.
    And although for the first time in history the left won around 50 of the 295 seats in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, it would be difficult for it to push reforms through Congress, it says it will seek alliances with the centre, the left and minority movements.
    (Production: Javier Andres Rojas, Herbert Villarraga, Camilo Cohecha, Sergio Rodriguez, Alfonso Duarte)
  • Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2022. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register