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In May 2022 the first round will be held to elect the successor to Iván Duque. It seems like a long time, because there is still all of 2021 and five months of the following year. Despite this, in the electoral arena there are already about 30 pre-candidates with the desire to reach the Casa de Nariño. It is a numerous and varied deck in which there is everything as in a pharmacy. And that there are still records missing from several municipalities, as veteran political chroniclers would say.
Although there is a long way to go before the presidential elections, the truth is that next year there will be more talk about those who aspire to succeed Duque than about the president himself, whose figure will begin to rise.be recognized for what might be called his legacy, that he would necessarily have to go through what he did or did not do during the pandemic that has hit the country since the beginning of the year.
In the political electoral scenario of next year, the former candidates will once again have a leading role Sergio Fajardo and Gustavo Petro, who today monopolize the attention of public opinion. Both were defeated by Duque in 2018. Fajardo in the first round and Petro in the second.
But despite the evident prominence they have today and that they will have in 2021, both Fajardo and Petro, who score in the polls, nothing guarantees that the final fight to choose Duque’s successor will be between the two of them. That scenario could change radically next year.
And this is so because neither of them has managed to seize the growing “Electoral spectrum of the center”, which will be the main protagonist of 2022. Fajardo seems to lose the ground that he had gained by positioning himself as the candidate away from the increasingly polarized extremes, while Petro continues to be determined to radicalize his discourse and with it, he is increasingly distancing himself from the broad band of moderate and rational voters.
In the case of Fajardo – a great reference for the voters of the center in the past presidential elections – his figure has been blurred to the point that although it is known that the center will be an electoral protagonist in 2022, It is not taken for granted that this role will be the responsibility of the former governor of Antioquia.
The Hidroituango scandal, to which he ended up linked by decision of the General Comptroller’s Office, affected his image as a disciplined, pristine and judicious official. His explanations about the “delegation of his functions” lack the forcefulness that the serious situation in which billions of pesos of the most ambitious infrastructure project in the country in recent years merits. The tepidity of his explanations will end up passing him a collection account in the next presidential campaign.
In what has to do with Gustavo Petro, his great bet is to become the “lone ranger” of 2022. His intention to distance himself from those who could be his allies in the next contest, including sectors of the “center-left”, but with a less radical discourse and much more given to consensus, cannot be interpreted otherwise. The Petrist purpose of “fajardizing” those who think differently helps little in a campaign in which to win what is required is to add and not subtract.
In the line of adding and not subtracting is uribismo with the former president Álvaro Uribe at the head, who from his farm El Ubérrimo, in Córdoba, has made approaches with influential and decisive sectors of national politics, such as Cambio Radical, represented by the former mayor of Barranquilla Alex Char, who will also play his cards in 2022. Uribe has also met with the former president of Congress Dilian Francisca Toro, of the party of La U, as well as with leaders of the Conservative Party. This coalition could be joined by the “liberal gavirismo”, led by César and Simón Gaviria.
Thus, 2021 starts in electoral politics with a huge cloak of uncertainty in which nothing is written about candidacies. Voters away from extremes and tired of polarizing speeches become objects of seduction. In them is the secret for the success or failure of the aspirants to succeed Duquand. And it is in this area where the possibilities for the emergence and consolidation of a not only viable, but –above all– successful candidacy are given. And that candidacy is not yet clearly visible. That is why 2021 will be so important in electoral matters. Let’s see, then, what the pre-election scenario of 2021 will be like.
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