RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Colombia closed this Sunday an atypical presidential campaign in a public square with an unusual day in which there were no major events and in which the candidates for the ballot, Gustavo Petro and Rodolfo Hernández, were absent from the contact with the electorate one week before the appointment with the polls.
Petro, candidate of the left-wing coalition Historical Pact, had planned to attend a meeting with families to practice traditional Colombian games in a town south of Bogotá, but he finally canceled his attendance and his campaign closure was diluted in a few activities of his followers.
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Something similar happened with the independent populist Hernández, who had planned an event to show muscle with his “rodolfistas” in Bogotá that was ultimately canceled after the engineer’s decision to cancel his entire agenda for security reasons.
This unusual closure of the campaign in a public square for the second round is the best allegory of a lackluster and diluted race in which the candidates have resorted to social networks to proselytize, leaving aside the rallies and visits to the cities that characterized the first round played on May 29.
Next Sunday, June 19, Colombians will go to the polls in the definitive electoral appointment to choose the next president of the country between Petro and Hernández, a dispute that, judging by the voting intention polls, will be very close.
PETRISTAS AND RODOLFISTAS, ORPHANS
“In the first round we closed the campaign with 100,000 people in the Plaza de Bolívar (…) the entire country knows the mobilization capacity of Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez -his vice-presidential running mate-,” he explained from the town of Fontibón to Efe Alfonso Prada, head of Petro’s debate.
“In these three weeks of the second round, what we have done is get much closer to Colombians, listen to them very closely and carry out a campaign and a different policy, one of closeness,” the strategist explained.
At the event in support of Petro, families gathered to play tejo and boli-rana, two traditional Colombian games, and to participate in different activities, such as painting for children or a political propaganda “sticker” by Petro and Márquez.
The Petristas have wanted to demonstrate that they are “a candidacy for democracy, for peace in Colombia and for social justice”, in the words of Prada, who added that they hope that “this week the rival will come out to debates on television”, after that Hernández decided not to participate in any face-to-face in the electoral final stretch.
Both events brought together only about 60 people, a figure in line with the participation that political events have had in recent days, infected by an apparent lack of interest on the part of the candidates in winning the vote in the streets.
The Simón Bolívar park in Bogotá was once again the meeting point for a group of rodolfistas who already left on Saturday in a caravan of cars to tour the streets of the city.
With Colombian flags, music and a lot of political propaganda -caps, t-shirts and micro-perforated signs in the cars- the rodolfistas came out to show their support for the engineer and to try to convince the undecided and the blank vote, in which the election due to the tightness of the polls.
There was no shortage of harangues calling out “Rodolfo, my president” and messages with the motto of the engineer’s campaign such as “Do not steal, do not lie, do not betray, 0% impunity.”
After this melancholic closing of the campaign in the public square, the candidates still have a week ahead in which any activity they do has to be indoors.
THE VOTING BEGINS
The polls abroad so that Colombians can cast their vote opened at 08:00 local time on Monday (20:00 GMT on Sunday or 15:00 Colombian time) at the consulate in Auckland (New Zealand) which will be followed by those from Australia and successively those of Asia, Africa, Europe and America.
A total of 972,764 Colombians registered abroad are eligible to elect a president, including Colombians residing in Venezuela, where the National Registry has set up six voting stations in border municipalities.
The process abroad begins a week before, on Monday the 13th by local time, and ends on June 19, the day of the elections, being the United States, with 324,858; Venezuela (184,421), Spain (161,910), Canada (43,622) and Ecuador (35,543) are the countries with the greatest potential for Colombian voters.
With information from EFE