{"id":11518,"date":"2026-04-24T15:00:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T15:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/24\/peace-and-justice-at-stake-as-colombian-election-approaches-and-us-watches-counterpunch-org\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T15:00:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T15:00:22","slug":"peace-and-justice-at-stake-as-colombian-election-approaches-and-us-watches-counterpunch-org","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/24\/peace-and-justice-at-stake-as-colombian-election-approaches-and-us-watches-counterpunch-org\/","title":{"rendered":"Peace and Justice at Stake as Colombian Election Approaches and US Watches – CounterPunch.org"},"content":{"rendered":"

Image by Element5 Digital.
Gustavo Petro, Colombia\u2019s first and only left-leaning president, leaves office soon. First round voting takes place on May 31. Iv\u00e1n Cepeda, standard bearer of Petro\u2019s Historic Pact party, leads in opinion polls. Cepeda and his vice-presidential running mate are waging a vigorous campaign. She is A\u00edda Quilcu\u00e9e, of NASA heritage and a leader of CRIC, Latin America\u2019s oldest indigenous organization.
An opinion poll<\/a> taken in late March suggests Cepeda might even win a first-round victory. He was first choice for 37.5% of those surveyed. Right wing candidates Abelardo de la Espriella and Paloma Valencia, Cepeda\u2019s closet competitors, polled at 20.2 % and 19.9 %, respectively. However, two other polls indicate voting will go to a second round, and Cepeda may be defeated.
Cepeda\u2019s campaign gains strength from Petro\u2019s 50%<\/a> approval rating and victories of<\/a> Historic Pact candidates in legislative elections held on March 8. Candidates of dozens of parties competed. The Historic Pact won 25 seats in Colombia\u2019s Senate, with its 102 seats. The second-place Democratic Center party accounted for 17 seats. In voting for the Chamber of Representatives, with 183 seats, Petro\u2019s party took 36 seats and the second-place Democratic Center, 25 seats.
Interest in Cepeda\u2019s crucially important campaign extends into the darkest corners. Assassination plots<\/a> against Cepeda are coming to light, maybe with CIA involvement. There\u2019s electoral fraud on the way, says<\/a> Petro.
The candidate<\/strong>
Beginning in 2010, Iv\u00e1n Cepeda, born in 1962, served in Colombia\u2019s Congress as a representative and then as senator. In 2003 he and others founded the\u00a0National Movement for Victims of State Crimes, a coalition of groups seeking justice for victims of armed conflict. As congressperson, Cepeda investigated former President Alvaro Uribe for his ties with paramilitaries, and took him to court.
Manuel Cepeda, Iv\u00e1n Cepeda\u2019s father, was a Communist Party leader, editor of the Party\u2019s newspaper, and senator. Paramilitaries killed him in 1994. Violence and threats caused Iv\u00e1n Cepeda, alone or with his family, to seek exile abroad intermittently between 1964 and 2003, mostly in Soviet Bloc nations.
Cepeda\u2019s government experience and exposure to Colombia\u2019s way of violence well qualify him to bring the people\u2019s cause to Colombia\u2019s top job.
The party<\/strong>
The Historic Pact (HP) has a convoluted history. The Colombia Humana party, founded and led by Petro, formed a coalition of parties in 2018 that was a platform for Petro\u2019s unsuccessful presidential run in 2018. Colombia Humana in 2021 formed a coalition of parties and social movements that became the Historic Pact for Colombia. Petro won the 2022 presidential election on that ticket.
In September 2025, the National Electoral Council converted that coalition into a political party. The parties formally making up the coalition could no longer participate in elections, specifically the Patriot Union, the Alternative Democratic Pole, and the Communist Party. In primary voting in October 2025, the new Historic Pact party selected Cepeda to be its presidential candidate.
In power<\/strong>
The record of the Historic Pact government is mixed. But there were accomplishments. The Congress rejected Petro\u2019s healthcare reform program. His broad-based pension reform plan featuring gender equity gained<\/a> approval. Implementation awaits a Constitutional Court decision. A comprehensive labor reform program took effect<\/a>, mostly. Petro recently ordered<\/a> a 23% minimum wage increase for 10% of the workforce.
His government increased<\/a> direct investment in the infrastructure of municipalities, prominently in schools and universities. Colombia\u2019s GDP is up 3.6%<\/a>. Inflation dropped from 13.3% in 2023 to 5.5%<\/a> in late 2025. Under Petro, Colombia\u2019s multidimensional poverty rate, which covers \u201caccess to education and available infrastructure,\u201d continued<\/a> its long drop from 30% in 2010, to 12.9% in 2022, to 9.9% in 2025. Rural poverty is 22.4%; the urban variety is 6.3%.
Government figures show that<\/a> 2,038,619 acres were delivered to \u201cpeasants, ethnic communities, and victims of [past] conflict.\u201d But Petro\u2019s government did not institute a comprehensive land reform program. As of 2022, only one percent<\/a> of Colombia\u2019s population, those with means, own 81% of the country\u2019s land. Petro\u2019s call for a constituent assembly has failed.
What lies ahead<\/strong>
Taking office, Petro proclaimed his goal of \u201ctotal peace.\u201d He was reacting to violence continuing long after the 2016 signing of the government\u2019s Peace Agreement with FARC insurgents. The violence remains as he leaves office, mostly in rural areas. Responsibility lies with paramilitaries in the service of narcotraffickers, dissident FARC insurgents, and the National Liberation Army. That insurgency has negotiated peace, but unsuccessfully.
If Cepeda loses in the coming elections, either one of his two closest competitors would form an extreme right-wing government prone to revitalizing Colombia\u2019s traditional alliance with the United States.
Colombia\u2019s government under Petro retained an inconsistent but real attachment with the small bloc of left-leaning Latin American and Caribbean governments opposed to U.S. regional domination. With a conservative Colombian government in power, only Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Mexico would be standing in the way of U.S. aggression. The recently-announced U.S. National Security Strategy<\/a> weaponized the Monroe Doctrine like never before
Traditions count<\/strong>
A new conservative government would undoubtedly fortify Colombia\u2019s tried and true regimen of ruling-class control over land and natural resources and of exploitative financial, commercial and narcotrafficking ventures.
That long state of affairs gave rise to multiples horrors, among them: the massacre of striking banana workers in 1928, repression and terror in rural areas in the 1940s and peaking during conservative president Laureano G\u00f3mez<\/a>\u2019s era (1950-1953), the Rojas Pinilla<\/a> military dictatorship (1953-57), the onset in the 1960s of violent paramilitary rampages backed by Colombia\u2019s military, the murders of thousands of Patriotic Union political activists after 1986, and the presidency of Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010), marked by paramilitary killings and narcotraffickers\u2019 intrusion in political life.
The Historic Pact Party joins another tradition, that of political resistance. High points were: Congressman Jorge Eli\u00e9cer Gait\u00e1n in 1928 demanding<\/a> justice for the banana workers, Gait\u00e1n leading the March<\/a> of Silence in 1948, the reformist presidencies<\/a> of Alfonso L\u00f3pez Pumarejo\u00a0(1934-1938 and 1942-1945), the insurgency (1965 -2016) represented by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the early trajectory of the Patriotic Union<\/a> under FARC and the Communist Party leadership.
For U.S. reactionaries, a kindred Colombian government returning to power would surely reinforce their own ample tradition of warmaking in Colombia. Precedents abound. U.S. Special Forces consultant arrived<\/a> in Colombia in 1962. His recommendation was for paramilitaries to be employed to damp down disorder and rebelliousness in the countryside.
Decision-makers had long ago opted for U.S. air bases in Colombia plus troop displacements and military contractors. Through U.S. Plan Colombia<\/a> (2000 -2010), Colombia\u2019s government received billions in military funding, military intelligence on call, funds and advice for new prisons, and military assistance. The U.S. was fighting war on drugs, it was said. The real purpose<\/a> was war against leftist insurgents.
Cepeda\u2019s top two electoral opponents represent old political ways. Paloma Valencia is the presidential candidate of the Democratic Center Party, founded by Alvaro Uribe. According to analyst Horacio Duque, Valencia \u201cis the granddaughter<\/a> of Guillermo Le\u00f3n Valencia, one of the toughest conservative presidents of the 20th century \u2026 Her program expresses a classical conservatism partaking of (Spanish dictator) Francisco Franco: defense of the traditional family and of Catholicism.
Abelardo de la Espriella<\/a>, the other candidate, is the candidate of the Movement for National Salvation. Its founder was the son of the aforementioned and widely-reviled President Laureano G\u00f3mez<\/a>. Duque characterizes<\/a> the candidate as a \u201cfar-right nationalist backed by Vox and Abascal, the ultra-Catholic scourge of Spanish politics \u2026 He proposes deploying the military in the streets, forming a military alliance with the United States and Israel\u2026 and promoting what he calls a \u201cColombia of property owners.\u201d
Concluding<\/strong>
The U.S. government sticks to its warmaking mode of being \u2013 as evidenced by war against FARC rebels. Sim\u00f3n Trinidad was a FARC soldier. He was captured<\/a> and remains in a high security U.S. prison, serving a 60-year sentence. Our message to Washington officials is: \u201cPlease get unstuck. That war is over. Think peace not war. Let Sim\u00f3n Trinidad return to Colombia.\u201d
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tW.T. Whitney Jr.<\/strong>\u00a0is a retired pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.<\/em> \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image by Element5 Digital.Gustavo Petro, Colombia\u2019s first and only left-leaning president, leaves office soon. First round voting takes place on May 31. Iv\u00e1n Cepeda, standard bearer of Petro\u2019s Historic Pact party, leads in opinion polls. Cepeda and his vice-presidential running mate are waging a vigorous campaign. She is A\u00edda Quilcu\u00e9e, of NASA heritage and a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11518","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}