The local and regional elections this Sunday in Colombia They drew a new political map of the country and gave the president a wake-up call Gustavo Petrowhose candidate suffered a crushing defeat in the dispute of the Bogota City Halla city that he himself governed and that has been his stronghold.
In the Colombian capital, the former senator Carlos Fernando Galanof New Liberalism, a party founded by his father, Luis Carlos Galan Sarmientomurdered by the drug trafficking mafia in 1989, when he was the favorite to win the Colombian Presidency, won easily and without the need to go to a second round.
With the vote closed, Galán is close to 1,500,000 votes (49.02%), followed by the independent Juan Daniel Oviedowhich obtained 614,233 ballots (20.10%) and relegated the also former senator to third place Gustavo Bolivarrecord of Petro and his Historical Pact coalition, which received 571,591 votes (18.71%).
In fact, Bolívar, upon recognizing Galán’s victory, assured that centralism “killed” them and that the results are “a punishing vote for the Historical Pact,” since many people who voted for them in the last presidential elections “have become disillusioned.” “. For this reason, he added, it is necessary “to travel through Colombia to pick up those broken pieces of the Historical Pact and return to being the first force.”
Bolívar’s disappointment is no small thing if one takes into account that just 16 months ago, in the 2022 presidential elections, Petro obtained more than 2.2 million votes in Bogotá, that is, 58.59% of the capital, a flow that reduced a third in today’s elections.