Thus, Colombia is in the home stretch of a very significant Presidential Election, which will be held May 30th.
At the moment there are 2 front runners, but more than 10 people running. What I love about the news here is that Every Single Night they devote about 10 minutes to a recap of the days political happenings. There seems to be no media bias - if the canditate was out in the media that day and gave an interview, the news will show a snippet of that interiview - even for candidates that have less than 5% of the vote. I find that pretty remarkable.
Well now it seems to be a showdown between these two:
Juan Manuel Santos: is the successor of Uribe, having served as his Defense Minister for the last several years. He is very popular among Uribe fans, especially in the rural areas of Colombia, and was the front-runner in this election until last week, when he was overtaken in the polls by this man:
Antanas Mockus: is running on the newly formed Green Party. He has served as Mayor of Bogota twice, and is running of the premise of "change". He is very popular in the urban areas, especially among young people and is gaining a lot of traction on Facebook. Last week the polls showed him with a 5 point lead over Santos, but it is good to remember that these polls don't always take into account the rural areas, which make up a significant portion of the overall vote.
Whatever the turnout, I think that either president will do a good job to keep Colombia on the path to prosperity. Watch on May 30th to see what happens!
And you can read more about the election in these two articles:
The Economist article
The Guardian article
i would vote green.
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