Round two, feedback and last minute

file image. The President of the Republic of Colombia, Ivan Duque Marquez, speaks to the press during a meeting with the President of the United States, Donald, in the Oval Office of the White House on March 2, 2020 in Washington. (Image source: Sarah Silbigear/Getty Images)

President Evan Duque’s acceptance rating is currently at a low level, as his tenure has been clouded by his administration’s handling of police misconduct, inequality and clashes between organized criminal groups.

Popular discontent has put the left in the presidential crossfire for the first time in the country’s history. However, the initial results are a setback for Petro, 62, a former guerrilla fighter and former mayor of Bogotá, who has been widely seen as one of the leading candidates.

The biggest losers in this first round were President Ivan Duque and former President Alvaro Uribe, and the latter was particularly crucial when it came to not supporting any candidate, according to analyst Vicente Torrijos.

Uribismo is no longer the electoral force it has been in the past 20 years, because, as analyst Rafael Nieto Loiza told CNN en Español, “Duque’s election as president and four years of his government, as it has been the target of criticism of their party, this political power is in decline.”

With a high degree of unfavourability, former President Alvaro Uribe himself realized that his support for any candidate in the 2022 presidential election could be subtracted rather than added.

“Any candidate I get close to, there they say ‘Oribista’ and they put a stigma on him,” Uribe said in mid-April.

Finally, the election was also a referendum on the government of Evan Duque, who optimistically told the BBC last week that had he run for election he would have been re-elected. And what the first presidential run shows is that after a four-year government with plenty of ordeal and massive protests, Colombians want Duque and his unpopular government out of Colombian politics.

However, after Gutierrez and several right-wing politicians joined the Hernandez campaign, for many Oribismo he did not die, he only transformed.