Colombia: Leftists Crushed in Regional Elections After President Petro Compares Israel to Nazis, Visits China

Colombian right-wing and centrist candidates obtained sweeping victories in Sunday’s regional elections, dealing a huge blow to the leftist government coalition led by President Gustavo Petro, the nation’s first leftist president.

The Colombian electorate headed to the polls on Sunday to elect 32 governors, 1,102 mayors, and more than 19,000 other regional legislatures and public office positions nationwide, featuring over 125,000 candidates on the ballot. The voter turnout rate in Colombia was tallied at 59.08 percent, meaning 22.98 million of Colombia’s 38.9 million voters participated in the election.

The catastrophic losses for Colombia’s left follow a series of unpopular moves by Petro, a former member of the Marxist M19 guerrilla, that included threatening to cut ties with Israel after comparing the traditional Colombian ally to Nazi Germany and honoring mass murderer Mao Zedong during a visit to China.

The results are perceived to be a “punishment vote” over disappointment with the government of the Historic Pact leftist coalition led by Petro, according to Gustavo Bolivar, a failed Petro-endorsed candidate for mayor of Bogotá. Petro himself served as mayor of the capital city prior to becoming president.

Sunday’s election saw the defeat of the government coalition’s gubernatorial candidates in 25 of the nation’s 32 departments (states). Colombia’s six main cities — Bogotá, Medellín, Barranquilla, Cali, Cartagena, and Bucaramanga — will be ruled by opposition members or independent candidates for the four years after they take office on January 1, 2024.

Petro has seen his approval ratings dramatically plummet during his first year in office. The results of a survey released in early October indicate that Petro’s disapproval ratings hover at 60 percent, a rate he has consistently maintained throughout the year. 

The survey, so far the latest of its kind, was conducted shortly before Petro single-handedly triggered a massive international controversy through a series of belligerent tirades on X, formerly Twitter, condemning Israel following Hamas’s unprecedented terrorist attack on October 7, which left 1,200 dead and more than 230 taken hostage.

In his controversial rants, Petro compared Israel to Nazi Germany and accused the nation of turning Gaza, which Hamas controls, into an Auschwitz-style concentration camp. The government of Israel responded to Petro’s accusations by suspending its security exports to Colombia — to which Petro responded by threatening to cut ties with Israel altogether.

Shortly after threatening Israel with a potential rupture of diplomatic ties, Petro traveled to China last week to meet with genocidal dictator Xi Jinping, resulting in China “elevating” its diplomatic relations with Colombia to the status of “strategic partnership.” Both countries signed 12 agreements on trade, communication, the digital economy, and other subjects.

During his official visit to China, Petro laid a wreath in Tiananmen Square and signed the guest book located at the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. In the note, Petro wrote that Mao “inspired” him throughout his political career.

“I was 15 years old when I read Mao. His five philosophical theses and his studies on contradiction. The flow of life and history. You sowed illusions in the entire youth of the world, and opened the way for your people to be great in the hour, Commander,” Petro wrote in the book. “History goes on and the conflict can plunge us into human extinction. Today it is either capital or life. We go for the ‘Long March’ for life.”

Historically, Colombian citizens have not been fond of communism, largely in part due to Colombia’s continued fight against Marxist drug trafficking terrorist organizations such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the National Liberation Army (ELN), and the now-extinct M19 guerilla, of which Petro was a former member during his youth. 

These communist terrorist organizations have, over the span of six decades, unleashed heinous attacks on Colombia, and by 2022, Colombian organizations have registered more than 420,000 victims as a result of the ongoing armed conflict.

Following the publication of results by Colombian electoral authorities on Sunday, Petro addressed the nation in an official five-minute broadcast in which he congratulated the elected officials and asked that all regions “work together to articulate the campaign proposals and thus achieve progress in Colombia.”

“We will work to articulate their campaign proposals so that we can jointly build a country that fights corruption, injustice and faces the climate change crisis,” Petro said.

In addition to the official address, Petro also publicly reacted to Sunday’s electoral results in a now-deleted message on his personal Twitter account. In the post, which had a much different tone to that of his official address, Petro dismissed claims of having suffered a “political defeat” due to his coalition’s electoral performance.

“They talk about my political defeat and I only advance them one fact: the political forces that triumphed in my presidential campaign won in seven departments,” Petro’s deleted message reportedly read. “Four years ago we only had an impact in one.”

The now-deleted post, which outraged Colombian Twitter users, was refuted on Monday morning by Sen. María Fernanda Cabal, a fierce opponent of Petro’s leftist government.

“Gustavo, in his revolutionary and electoral fantasy, is saying that he won where he did not win. In Boyacá and Caldas the ‘Historical’ Pact had its own candidate. Mythomaniac after all,” Cabal’s message reads.

In Bogotá, independent centrist candidate Carlos Fernando Galán of the New Liberalism party was elected with 49.02 percent of the votes. Galán defeated economist Juan Daniel Oviedo, who was the director of the National Statistics Department under the presidency of Iván Duque, and former Sen. Gustavo Bolívar, the government-endorsed leftist candidate.

Galán is the son of Luis Carlos Galán, a former senator and presidential candidate who was assassinated in 1989 by order of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.

Galán thanked his supporters and asked them to “build on what has been built” to “solve the daily problems that affect us today.”

Sunday’s election also saw the return to office of Federico Gutiérrez as mayor of Medellín, a position he previously held from 2016 to 2019. Gutiérrez was the establishment right-wing candidate in 2022’s presidential election, coming in third place in the first round.

In an interview held with W Radio on Monday, Gutiérrez stated that Sunday’s results sent a clear message to Petro.

“Yesterday, the country spoke. A new political scenario was generated in Colombia. Here it was clear that we will govern from the regions because centralism is bad,” Gutiérrez said. “We want to sit down to talk and we hope that Petro summons us, he has an opportunity to talk, so we hope that the relationship will be respectful in the midst of the difference.”

Pero’s presidential term is set to end in August 2026. He is not eligible for reelection as per the Colombian constitution, which was amended in 2015 to ban presidents from reelection. The amendment is widely believed to have been passed to prevent conservative former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez (2002-2010) from seeking a third term in 2018.

Editor’s Note:  This story was updated to reflect a revised number on the death toll from the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel.  The Israeli government estimate of 1,400 was revised to around 1,200, according to Reuters. 

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.