“The agenda changed, but the right-wing proposal did not,” says Borda Guzmán. “In this election, the Peace Agreement, which had been characterized by the right almost as a surrender of the state to the guerrillas, is not playing any role, and, instead, reference is made to the issues that were put on the table. the popular manifestations of 2021, which are economic and gender inequality, poverty and lack of employment.
What challenges will the next president of Colombia face?
For many analysts, the change in the political winds in Colombia that could bring the left to the government had its origin in the massive protests in April of last year.
At that time, the presentation of a controversial tax reform project by the Duque government was the spark that lit the bonfire in a society plagued by chronic inequality.
According to data from the World Bank, in 2020 the richest 10% of the population in Colombia received 11 times more income than the poorest decile, a level of inequity that is only surpassed by Brazil in Latin America. Meanwhile, Colombia is among the five countries with the highest concentration of land in the world: 81% of private land is in the hands of 1% of the population.
Those burdens deepened with the pandemic. In the last two years, almost 2 million people became part of the legion of 19.6 million poor in the country. This scenario has been aggravated by rising inflation. In April, the price index climbed to 9.23%, the highest in the last 21 years, according to the National Administrative Department of Statistics (Dane).