Sunday 19 June saw a long-awaited change in Colombian politics: for the first time in the country’s modern history, a left-wing candidate won the presidential election. In the runoff vote, senator Gustavo Petro of the Historical Pact alliance defeated former business leader and political outsider Rodolfo Hernández of the Anti-Corruption League, on a record turnout of over 58 per cent.

Neither contender represented a traditional party. Both sought to respond to the widespread discontent with traditional politics that has repeatedly expressed itself on the streets. They both represented change – but very different versions.

Third time’s the charm

Petro first ran for the presidency in 2010, when he came fourth, and again in 2018, when he finished second, losing to Iván Duque. But in those races, the former member of the M-19 guerrilla group didn’t stand a chance. In a country deeply scarred by decades of armed conflict, the stigma of violent extremism continued to follow Petro, despite the fact he had given up arms and entered institutional politics decades earlier.

The 2018 campaign largely focused on the 2016 peace accords with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), crowned by a failed referendum in which opposition to the signing of the peace agreements prevailed. The 2022 campaign, by contrast, was the first in a long time that didn’t focus on security. This opened up an opportunity for a candidate with a progressive social agenda, speaking to the demands for economic justice that have repeatedly mobilised through protests since November 2019.

First-round voting on 29 May produced a surprise: Hernández, a 77-year-old millionaire and TikTok sensation with a vague and simplistic anti-corruption message, came second, ahead of the candidate expected to fight in the runoffs, Federico Gutiérrez.

Hernández and Petro led highly diverging campaigns. Hernández – a politically incorrect, gaffe-prone and sensationalist personality – shared short and simple messaging about ‘ending theft’, while Petro went with more complex ideas, setting out an economic and social programme that included reforms of the health and pension systems. For different reasons, both were portrayed as populists, with the runoff depicted as a battle between left-wing and right-wing populism led by two former mayors – Petro of Bogotá and Hernández of Bucaramanga – who had in common a rejection of traditional politics, and particularly of the legacy of former president and kingmaker Álvaro Uribe.

On the night of 29 May, Gutiérrez and other eliminated contenders announced their support for Hernández. The speculation was that many voters, having opted for these candidates out of fear of Petro’s leftist leanings, would follow them, and that support for Petro might have reached a ceiling. But Petro responded by moving to broaden his support.

A backdrop of violence

In some of Colombia’s regions there were serious doubts that the election could proceed normally. Even though FARC guerrillas for the most part demobilised following the signing of the Peace Accords in 2016, armed conflict remains very much a reality in some areas, under dispute by a smaller guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), dissident FARC elements, paramilitary groups and drug cartels.

According to the Observatory of Human Rights and Conflict of the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz), 44 massacres took place in Colombia in the first five months of 2022 alone, resulting in the killing of 158 people – many of them community leaders and human rights defenders.

Armed groups became more active during the election campaign. In May, the Ombudsman’s Office published a report detailing the activities of several illegal armed groups, including the ELN and the Clan del Golfo, which over several days maintained an armed strike – a shutdown enforced through the threat of violence – in multiple municipalities. In this context, journalists were threatened and several online media shut down in direct reaction to threats.

Colombia continues to be the world’s deadliest country for environmental activists. According to Global Witness’s 2021 report, 65 land, environmental and Indigenous human rights defenders were murdered in Colombia in 2020. There is no reason to believe the next report will offer a better picture.

Change, but what kind?

Both Hernández and Petro promised change to people fed up with armed violence, economic injustice and social exclusion, demands made more urgent by the devastating impacts of the pandemic. But all Hernández had to offer was a vague anti-corruption message, undermined by the fact that he faces multiple accusations of corruption. Petro pledged to tackle socioeconomic exclusion, promising to expand revenue to fund social security by taxing corporations and the rich.

Petro rode a fine line, trying not to scare away the centrist votes he needed to win the race while promising change radical enough to appeal to voters disenchanted with the performance of the previous right-wing and centre-right administrations. He weaved pragmatic alliances with politicians from traditional parties, committed to respecting private property and promised not to try to stay in power beyond his single constitutional term. In his victory speech, he highlighted the need to develop capitalism in Colombia, ‘not because we worship it, but because we first have to overcome pre-modernity and feudalism’.

He increasingly relied on his running partner, Francia Márquez – an Afro-Colombian environmental activist of modest social origins who embodied the promise of a better future for the majority of Colombians – to keep up the enthusiasm.

Petro and Márquez overcame an intense disinformation campaign that instrumentalised deep-rooted racism, sexism and classism, winning with nearly 11.3 million votes, the highest amount ever received by a candidate in Colombia. This made Petro the first-ever leftist president of Colombia, and Márquez the first Afro-Colombian female vice-president. As journalist Julián Martínez put it, for the first time people who resemble the majority would wield power in Colombia.

But the fact that the opposite camp received about 10 million votes highlighted a persistent division, with a considerable overlap between votes in the 2016 peace referendum and 2022 presidential election. Petro won resounding victories in places with many victims of armed violence and the highest numbers of people from excluded groups – exactly where the ‘yes’ vote was concentrated in the 2016 referendum.

The challenge of unity

Petro represents a turn to the left, but a seemingly moderate one. He is often described as placed halfway between the modern left represented by Chile’s Gabriel Boric and the traditional left embodied by Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the two Latin American presidents that congratulated him first and most enthusiastically. His focus on climate change and energy transition seems to bring him closer to Boric.

But some worry about Petro’s supposed authoritarian tendencies and fear he might bring Colombia closer to Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela, a possibility that also scares the bulk of the over two million Venezuelan migrants living in Colombia. For them, the main question is whether Petro will help urge democratic elections in Venezuela or instead strengthen Maduro’s position. This could also have serious implications for Colombia’s strategic relationship with the USA.

Upon being elected, Petro requested the attorney general to free the young people prosecuted for their participation in protests, correcting an injustice, although some viewed this as a threat to judicial independence. For the time being, Petro seems on the path of moderation – not least because he will need to gather wide support to get his ambitious policies through Congress.

Although absent from the runoff, traditional political parties still have functional political machinery that secured them substantial congressional representation in the March parliamentary election. While he won a good share of congressional seats, Petro is far from having a legislative majority. As a result of the alliances he built during the campaign, several moderate figures from traditional parties will occupy top government roles, including at the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Petro’s victory speech emphasised peace, dialogue, consensus and unity, and urged people to ‘leave hatred behind’. Much will depend on Petro’s ability to bring together the Colombia that voted for him and the one that did not. He will need to build consensus to get a working legislative majority to pass the reforms he promised on the campaign trail.

If congressional alliances fall apart, the danger is that Petro may be tempted to rule by decree, bypassing checks and balances and limiting the space for the expression of dissent. This is something he must resist, even as he faces great pressure to deliver on his promises in the knowledge that, if disenchanted, his voters will take to the streets once more.