No suprise here

It's finally official. Juan Manuel Santos will be the next president of Colombia.

On what was a cold and rainy Father's Day during the World Cup, a little over 13 million people made it to the polls...

Santos took 69% of the votes and Mockus took 27.5%.

Results.

Elections were last night, and...as expected, but not as the media would have led you to believe, Juan Manuel Santos of Partido de la U won with over 46% of the votes. Compared to 21% for Antanas Mockus of Partido Verde.

What you probably don't know is that if in the first round election the front runner does not win over 51% of the votes, they have a second round election one month after the first - with only the top two candidates on the ballot.

So nothing is final confirming Santos as the next president, but with only 21% of the vote, I think Antanus Mockus should concede and save us from having another ley seca.

It's Election Time...

...and you know what that means??

LEY SECA!

Ley Seca means Dry Law...and here in Colombia, when there is a national election, ley seca is implemented for the entire weekend. So starting today at 6pm until Monday morning, no establishment in Colombia is allowed to sell any alcohol of any kind.

The law is intended to promote security during volatile election times.

but p.s. it's not always during elections. Aerosmith played a concert here a week ago and Ley Seca was implemented in the surrounding 20 blocks of the park where they played - also to promote security. When Metallica was here back in March, all hell broke loose, rioters, looters, etc. They didn't want that to happen again. And it didn't from what I hear, all went pretty smoothly.

Presidential Election 2010

You may recall hearing some fuss over the Colombian presidential term limits a few months ago. Alvaro Uribe, the long serving president of Colombia wanted to change the law, allowing him to run for president again, past the 8 year term limit - much like Bloomberg did in New York last year, except that Uribe was not as successful (even though he has been a very popular presiden with a 74% aproval rating)

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