Colombia Elections 2022: Gustavo Petro votes “with the hope of changing history” and bringing the left to power

Colombian presidential candidate Gustavo Petrowho starts as a favorite in this first round according to the polls, voted this Sunday in Bogotá with the “hope of changing history” in the face of the possibility that the left he represents will come to power for the first time in Colombia.

The candidate starred in the anecdote of the day when he arrived at his polling station without identification, so he was unable to vote and had to wait for members of his team to bring him his ID card in order to exercise his right to vote. After 40 minutes of waiting, he was finally able to deposit his ballot in the polls.

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“I trust in Colombian society, in its willingness to change. In the end there are only two relatively simple alternatives: either leave things as they are Colombiawhich is more corruption, more violence and more hunger, or change Colombia”the candidate of the left-wing coalition Historical Pact was hopeful.

Petro could be the first leftist president of Colombia and this Sunday he insisted that Colombia it has not had a progressive president so far due to “vote buying”.

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The alternative, he insisted, means “advancing towards a perspective of peace, prosperity and democracy for the people, for the people. With France (Marquezhis vice-presidential formula) we represent the will for change, and I am confident that this will for change will come true.”

Petro arrived at a school in Bogotá, in the popular neighborhood of La Asunción (south), where he exercised his right together with three of his daughters, his granddaughter and his wife, Verónica Alcocer, also accompanied by Ernesto Gómez, former secretary of the Government of Bogotá, which in recent days has shown its support for the Historic Pact campaign.

Upon his arrival he was greeted by a crowd of supporters shouting “You live, you feel, Petro president”, while the applicant was “calm”. “The nerves begin at four in the afternoon (9:00 p.m. GMT),” when the polls close, he assured.

“For now everything is going normally” on election day, added the presidential candidate in reference to the speeches of fraud and irregularities that have been made by his formation and by other candidates.

Petro is the one who starts as the favorite according to the polls, which, however, do not give him the necessary percentage to win in the first round and it is most likely that he will have to face the second most voted in a second round at the polls on the 19th of June.

His main rivals according to the latest polls are the right-wing Federico “Fico” Gutierrezfrom Equipo por Colombia Fico, and the independent populist Rodolfo Hernández, from the Anti-Corruption Governors League.

Source: Elcomercio

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