In reading through some of the US coverage of the aftermath of the Colombian Constitutional Court’s ruling that stopped any chance of a third term for Álvaro Uribe, I have noted a mini-theme.

The LAT: “ The highly anticipated ruling comes before a presidential election scheduled for May 30, opening the way to an exciting, compressed campaign with no clear front-runner.”

The AP:  “What Colombia lacks is a front-runner…”

I think that this is an inaccurate characterization.  What the race now lacks is a prohibitive favorite, which Uribe would have been had he been able to run.  While it is true that in a recent poll Santos only received 12.1% (which was top in that poll), but that was in a very crowded list of 14 candidates (plus “not sure”).  He also led polls in July and September in a list of 17 candidates (plus “not sure”), the polls aren’t the issue, per se.  The fact of the matter is that Uribe and his “democratic security” policies remain quite popular.  Juan Manuel Santos is the clear and natural heir to that current of Colombian politics, and as such has to be considered the front-runner as a result.

Further, if the race makes it to a second round, voters who may have gone with Cambio Radical, the Conservatives and a lot of Liberals¹ will likely migrate to Santos.

If there is a second round, it will probably be between Santos, as the heir to Uribe, versus a candidate of the center-left, such as independent Sergio Fajardo or the PDA’s Gustavo Petro.   And, at this point, it seems more likely it would be Fajardo than Petro.

As such, the Latin American Herald-Tribune gets it closer to right than the papers noted above:  “Santos is as close as there is to a front-runner” and Reuters hits the nail on the head:  “The race for Colombia’s presidency began Saturday, with former defense minister Juan Manuel Santos the favorite.”

1. Indeed, Santos comes from a prominent Liberal family and Uribe was once a member of the PL.  Indeed, Santos’ granduncle, Eduardo Santos, was a Liberal President of Colombia from 1938-1942.  Further, the Santos family used to own El Tiempo, long known as a Liberal paper—especially in the earlier part of the 20th Century when Colombian papers were quite partisan. [↩]