Colombia elects ex-rebel Gustavo Petro as first left-wing president

Gustavo Petro is slated to become Colombia's President after winning the country's Presidential Elections. The former guerrilla won against 77-year-old construction magnate Rodolfo Hernandez.Figures show he took 50.5% of votes, defeating his millionaire rival by a close margin of around 700,000 ballots. His running mate Francia Marquez, a single mother and former housekeeper, will become the country's first black woman Vice President. He is  the country's first leftist head of state. “As of today, Colombia is changing, a real change that guides us to one of our aims: the politics of love … of understanding and dialogue,” a jubilant Petro told his supporters in the Colombian capital, Bogota. “The great challenge that all of us Colombians have is reconciliation,” said Marquez, who was the target of threats during a fractious campaign. “The time has come to build peace, a peace that implies social justice.”

Petro's journey to the presidency has been nothing more than historic. At the age of 21, he joined the urban guerrilla group M-19, for which he later spent a year and a half in prison. The politician has said that during the days following his arrest he was tortured by the army and he was later convicted for illegal possession of weapons. In 2010, he served as a congressman and in 2011 he became the mayor of Bogota, a position that propelled him to the national spotlight amid many controversies. In 2015, he ended his term in office with low popularity. He has run for president three times and in 2018 he was defeated in a run-off by right-wing candidate Ivan Duque.

​​"The elections more or less showed two ‘Colombias’. We want Colombia in the midst of its diversity to be one Colombia," Petro said in his speech. But more than 11 million Colombians who voted for him relate to his promise to tackle widespread inequality, hunger, and poverty. Petro's rise to power, some fear, could also jeopardize the relationship between Washington and Bogota. Colombia has long been the United States’ strongest ally in the region, but Petro’s vision of drug policy and trade agreements could lead to a rupture in the relationship.