The 2014 Colombian presidential race is already underway. For once the talk is not about Juan Manuel Santos’ re-election. Nor is the focus on the machinations of the former president, Alvaro Uribe. This week we learnt that Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo, the intellectual left-winger intends to allow his name to go forward as a candidate.
Eloquent and polemical, Robledo has star appeal. He is, now that Gustavo Petro is in power, the most vocal and recognisable opposition politician in Colombia. In the 2010 senate race Robledo secured the third highest vote. He is undoubtedly a cult figure.
The left’s candidate of choice?
It is not in any way certain that Robledo will emerge as the chosen candidate for his Polo Democratic party. Clara Lopez, the Polo Democrats’ president is the favourite to secure the nomination. But the party is unlikely to decide this before next year, leaving plenty of scope for Robledo’s star to continue to ascend.
An eventual Robledo candidature would offer Colombians radical change. Robledo is opposed to just about every policy of the Santos administration. In fact Robledo runs counter virtually to the entire political culture of the country.
Robledo has made his career attacking the effects of the pro-market neo-liberalist policies that have reigned in Colombia since the 1990 presidency of Cesar Gaviria. Robledo is a red-blooded socialist who tends to protectionism, and the anti-big business rhetoric popular in large swathes of Latin America.
He is against the free-trade agreement with the USA, against private involvement in university education, and against the (as he sees it) colonialism of the Washington Consensus. Were he to win the presidential elections, he would quickly set about reversing much of the work of the last 20 years of centrist and right-wing Colombian governments.
In a telling interview with the quality publication El Colombiano earlier this month, Senator Robledo told Colombians that their country is on the sick-bed, and that the treatment the Santos presidency is administering is making the patient worse.
In this article, Robledo sets out the case for an alternative government for Colombia. A government based on socialist ideals. The senator’s thoughts for this brave new world were published a little over a week before it came to light that he was exploring the possibility of his candidature, as it is put. He will consult friends within the Polo Democratic Party before deciding his course of action.
Should he get a chance to present his prospectus, the article in El Colombiano sets outs clearly how this policy platform might look.
He argues that during the eighteen months of the Santos regime Colombia has gone from bad to worse. His principle argument is that government policies have benefited the monopolies, big businesses, and foreign investors at the expense of the poor, the middle classes, and the country’s small and medium-sized businesses. According to Robledo, Santos has widened Colombia’s inequality gap, reinforcing its status as the third most unequal nation on earth.
The intimation is that a Robledo presidency would halt the free trade agreements with the USA, with Europe and with South Korea. Robledo’s contention is that Colombia would not benefit from the agreements: The inherent structural imbalance would lend foreign companies a major advantage over less well developed Colombian businesses.Robledo predicts a new era of colonialism, as bad, he suggests, as the era of Spanish rule. This fatalism is typical of the protectionist left.
In the article, Robledo also attacks Santos’ land restitution policy, and his judicial reform laws arguing in his characteristically colourful language, that the President is steering the country into the ‘abyss’.
As with many politicians of his colour, Robledo is hotter on what he is against than on what he is for. A clear and compelling plan for a workable alternative for the country is not – for this website, at least – immediately available for consideration.
But Robledo will not worry about that. For now his brand is one of opposition. Last year when university students went on strike in protest against President’s Santos proposed changes to the education system, Robledo became the flag bearer of their cause. With soaring anti-privitisation rhetoric, Robledo launched wave after wave of attack, eventually helping students to force the government to shelve the plans. Robledo has long enjoyed cult status within certain parts of Colombian society.
In a Congress where over 90% of the politicians are members of the coalition government, Robledo stands out like a sore thumb of contrariness.
There is no point in pretending that Robledo is anything other than a long-shot for president in 2014. He is a politician that is best suited to opposition. There is no denying his eloquence or even his likability. But he is precisely the sort of leader the Colombian left needs to steer well clear of.
Petro’s election in Bogotá showed the way for his former Polo Democratic colleagues – move to the centre, or die. For the Colombian left to have a real chance in 2014 it must select the moderate (and experienced) Clara Lopez.
Robledo is a stalking horse, but one that provides a bit of colour to a Colombian political system where the odds are stacked hugely in favour of the ruling administration, and where opposition is often drowned out in a din of unanimity.
Kevin Howlett
Kevin is a political consultant and lobbyist who cut his teeth working in the UK Parliament. He is a regular panelist on Colombian television, a political communication strategist and a university lecturer. Kevin is the founder and editor of Colombia Politics.