For the first time in history, Colombia will have a leftist president. Gustavo Petro a former rebel and a longtime senator who pledged to transform the country’s economic system, Won the historic election Sunday according to the preliminary results, Colombia is now the third largest nation in Latin America that's been set on a radically new path.
“Colombians, today the majority of citizens have chosen the other candidate,” he told his supporters in Bucaramanga. “As I said during the campaign, I accept the results of this election.”
President Petro’s victory Shows the widespread discontent within Colombia, a country of 50 million citizens, with poverty and inequality on an all-time rise and widespread dissatisfaction with how former officials were handling things.
“The entire country is begging for change,” said Fernando Posada, a Colombian political scientist, “and that is absolutely clear.”
This Presidential win is extremally significant because of the country’s history. For years upon years the government fought a brutal leftist insurgency known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, However FARC signed a peace deal with the Colombian government in 2016, they put down their arms and opened space for a broader political discourse.
President Petro was part of a similar group, called the M-19, which demobilized in 1990, and became a political party that helped rewrite the country’s constitution.