Colombians vote overwhelmingly for change in first round of presidential elections

Authored by: David Huey, Colombia May 30, 2022

On 29^th of May, Colombians went to the polls for the second time in three months. The first round has already created a unique new paradigm for Colombia’s party system and the second round which promises to be a photo finish is coming up on the 19^th of June. This is why it’s important.

Fifty-five percent of those eligible to vote participated in the first round – 10 % more proportionately than during the first round four years ago – and roundly rejected the traditional parties that have governed Colombia to date. Between them, the first and second placed candidates, Gustavo Petro of the center-left Historical Pact and Rodolfo Hernandez of the populist Anti-Corruption League, polled 68.5%. Combined with the votes registered by fourth placed candidate, Sergio Fajardo, who represents the centrist Coalition for Hope, candidates offering Colombians a clean break from traditional politics won just under 73% of the total votes cast. This represents a seismic shift in political allegiance and promises to bring about a complete reconfiguration of Colombia’s traditional political parties going forward.

Much less clear is what kind of change Colombians will choose during the second round, scheduled in three weeks’ time on the 19^th of June. Although Gustavo Petro doubled his vote with respect to 2018 and was last night’s clear winner with a 12% lead, political analysts agree that he has come perilously close to reaching his electoral ceiling. Rodolfo Hernández, on the other hand, has achieved enormous political momentum over the last fortnight. Billing himself as a successful businessman and political outsider committed to tackling corruption, Hernández is likely to take the lions’ share of the remaining votes as traditional parties rally behind him in order to block Colombia’s first center-left presidency.

Last night’s biggest loser was ex-president Alvaro Uribe’s favorite, Federico Gutierrez. The center-right candidate for the Team for Colombia coalition polled only 24%, well behind Rodolfo Hernández. He was projected to run off against Gustavo Petro in the second round as the candidate best placed to continue Alvaro Uribe’s right-wing politics that have dominated Colombia so much over the last 20 years. Federico Gutierrez has already pledged his political support to Rodolfo Hernández. Fourth placed Sergio Fajardo is predicted to do the same.

This leaves the outcome of the second round wide-open with a probable photo-finish for the winning candidate. The winner has less than three weeks to persuade the greatest number of undecided voters that their brand of change is the one that Colombians most need, although this will require reaching out to traditional parties in order to cross the 50% finish line. Rodolfo Hernández, the self-proclaimed “King of Tik Tok”, would appear to be the best placed to do so, given that his self-financed campaign strategy has been almost exclusively based on social media. This gives him the greatest leverage with undecided voters given that he can continue to appeal to them directly in the knowledge that he can take the support from the anti-Petro traditional parties for granted. Petro’s only hope is to reach out to middle-of-the-road absentee voters, Sergio Fajardo supporters and the leadership of the traditional centrist Liberal Party, but in the process could risk losing some of his credibility as the bastion of Colombia’s anti-establishment.

Something that has not changed and is unlikely to do so in the near future is Colombia’s deep geographical divide. The two-way split that so profoundly polarized the country during the 2016 peace agreement referendum has reappeared during these elections. Last night’s electoral map has an uncanny resemblance to the one produced six years ago when Colombia’s poorest periphery – composed of the regions most affected by over 50 years of armed conflict – voted overwhelmingly to approve the agreement. Colombia’s more peaceful and prosperous interior (with the notable exception of Bogotá) rejected the outcome of the Havana negotiations. This time Petro, who has pledged to fully implement the peace agreement, won throughout Colombia’s most conflict sensitive regions, whilst Rodolfo Hernandez, who has been completely silent on the issue during his campaign, dominated the country’s central core. The only exception to Hernandez’s dominance of the interior was in the department of Antioquia, the homeland and political epicenter of former president Alvaro Uribe, ferocious opponent of Gustavo Petro and the peace agreement.

Given Gustavo Petro’s decades-long presence in Colombian politics, Rodolfo Hernández can seek to seize the mantle of the outsider going into the second round, and in this way best reflect the current anti-establishment mood of the majority of Colombians. In the final three weeks, much will depend on the ability of both sides to reach out to the floating voters and convince them that their version of change is that which best reflects the future.

#CheckBIGTech Instagram Live Series

Join us all this week at @fbusersunited for a series of Instagram Live conversations to hold the Meta accountable for their failure to stop hate, violence and disinformation on their platform. Meet users and organizers around the world who are working to change Facebook. 

We are calling on Facebook users to unite for a week of action to place user voices at the forefront of Meta’s 2022 Shareholders Meeting! There is no Facebook, Instagram or Whatsapp without us, the users. Users want Meta (and Mark Zuckerberg) to do better. We will no longer allow Facebook to harm its users, our communities, and our planet by spreading hate, violence, disinformation and misinformation for profit.

Why We’re Organizing:

The tragedy in Buffalo, reveals how Facebook & other Big Tech platforms have allowed Neo-nazi’s & white supremacists to organize and spread their message on the platform. Facebook’s failure to address fascist violence – that they profit from – proves it is up to us to protect each other. We cannot allow Meta shareholders meeting to happen without holding them accountable for their role in the tragedy that happened in Buffalo, and the harm they have done across the globe.

When the government of Australia tried to regulate Facebook, the company shut off online access to hospitals, emergency services, and charities as a negotiating tactic.

In Kenya, content moderators who sort through horrible images to safeguard users were fired after trying to start a union and are suing Facebook for unsafe working conditions.

Mexico has become ground zero for the war on journalism where half of the journalists killed in 2021 posted on Facebook hours before they were killed, and journalists now live in fear of anonymous Facebook pages.

These more recent examples follow the company’s role in the genocide in Myanmar, in racial violence in India, and election interference, along with the platform’s documented harms to teenage users.

All the while we’re fed endless promises that this time it will be better, yet the global giant spins on, fueling hatred, spreading disinformation, doing nothing to stop vulnerable communities from harm, and making profits.

Facebook has been put on notice.  They CAN do better. They’ve just never been forced to do so.  We’re uniting users to demand a stop to the abuse.

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Facebook Users Union/FUU People Power is a project of Media Alliance and Global Exchange

MEDIA ADVISORY

March 23, 2022

Meta disables Facebook Users Union Instagram Account

For more information contact :

Brittany Williams, Facebook Users Union Campaign Lead Email: brittany@facebookusers.org Tel: (305) 992-8168 or

Tracy Rosenberg, Executive Director, Media Alliance Email: tracy@media-alliance.org Tel: (510) 684-6853

MENLO PARK  —  Meta, the Facebook platform’s parent company, has officially disabled the Instagram account of the Facebook Users Union (@fbusersunion).

The Facebook Users Union is an advocacy organization committed to developing the collective voice of the platform’s nearly 3 billion users. Last Thursday, Facebook disabled FUU’s account and then  labeled it as “a mistake” and on March 22nd, Facebook fully deleted FUU’s account.

This ban comes just as Meta, Facebook’s parent company, prepares for their annual shareholder meeting that will address leadership changes with the board exit of Trump donor Peter Thiel,  and the incoming leadership of Nick Clegg, former Deputy Prime Minister of the U.K.  Facebook faces a slew of reputational risks and public concern over Facebook censorship, profit from harm to marginalized communities and democratic government and accusations of  election meddling. Facebook has recently admitted to being used to instigate violence against Rohingya muslims. Facebook has also faced allegations of mass censoring climate activists while making money from fossil-fuel ads, hosting Ukrainian Neo-Nazis, and abusing the labor rights of Kenyan content moderators seeking to unionize and raise their wages.

Media Alliance Executive Director Tracy Rosenberg (MA is one of the FBUU anchor groups) commented:

This is typical Meta. Instead of focusing on protecting the vulnerable being harmed by their platform, they are focused on protecting themselves from criticism from their own users.

FUU demands the immediate reinstatement of our Instagram account and encourages advocates, allies, and community members to raise awareness of Facebook censorship and participate in a week of action during the upcoming Facebook shareholder meetings.

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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a violation of International law. We condemn it.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a deadly escalation of a long-simmering conflict. Russia is not solely responsible for the tensions, but they are the ones who have initiated a large-scale military action. Russian forces should immediately withdraw to the positions established in the  Minsk II agreement of 12 February 2015.

But even as we condemn Russia’s initiation of the largest ground war in Europe since WWII we should remember that the United States and its allies have done much to fan the flames.

In 1998 when the Clinton Administration was expanding NATO, George Kennan, former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union and the architect of the Cold War “containment” policies told a journalist that growing NATO in the wake of the collapse of the USSR, “shows so little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.”

Our mistreatment of Russia is not an excuse for this invasion, but as we search for peace and a negotiated way out of this deadly mess, it is important that we acknowledge that NATO expansion and the threat of Ukraine similarly joining the alliance is also wrong. But just as we have condemned many egregious U.S. violations of international law (Iraq invasion, murderous drone strikes, etc) we must similarly condemn Russia’s flagrant violation.