Michael Shifter, writing at Foreign Policy has a good piece on Colombian Presidential
candidate, Antanas Mockus: President Spandex?
The piece is on target, although I question the assertion that it is possible for Mockus to win a surprise outright victory in the first round. Even if the non-contenders take only fractions of the vote, it seems mathematically unlikely that Mockus could win 50%+1 while Santos and all the others (Petro, Pardo, Sanin, Vargas and the others) would all sum to 49%.
A key paragraph:
How did Mockus do it? The key was tapping into a broad fatigue with political infighting and polarization, something Colombians might not have realized they were feeling until Mockus came along. Colombians, it turned out, were eager for a more relaxed, calmer style of leadership than Uribe’s frequently confrontational approach. To be sure, Colombians widely credit Uribe with helping to subdue the FARC insurgency and paramilitary forces and bring greater security to the country. Uribe’s take-charge political style was reassuring at the time. But after nearly eight years, that quality — though still valued, as evidenced by opinion polls — seems to be wearing thin.
The image is from a bottom of the page tease on FP’s site. To see the costume above in action, and to get a bit more context, I would point readers to this post and a pretty cool Green Party commercial.
The views expressed in the comments are the sole responsibility of the person leaving those comments. They do not reflect the opinion of the author of PoliBlog, nor have they been vetted by the author.
May 8th, 2024 at 8:35 pm
[...] More Mockus [...]