Colombia’s 2022 Presidential Election: What to Know

In Brief

Colombia’s 2022 Presidential Election: What to Know

Colombia’s election could deliver the country’s first left-wing president, an outcome with the potential to transform Bogota’s approaches to economic policy, peace negotiations, and foreign relations.

On May 29, Colombia will hold its first round of voting to choose the successor to President Ivan Duque, who can’t run for reelection due to term limits. Gustavo Petro, a left-wing senator and former guerrilla fighter, has emerged as the front-runner, and his victory would make him the country’s first leftist president. Many of his proposed policies stand to shake up Colombia’s economic and energy policies, its diplomatic relations, and the implementation of a peace deal that seeks to end decades of internal armed conflict.

Who are the main candidates?

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Gustavo Petro. Senator Petro previously fought for the Nineteenth of April Movement (M-19), a guerrilla group, and later became the mayor of Bogota. He led in a late April poll, with more than 40 percent of respondents expressing support, which means he is poised to be one of the two candidates in a run-off election in June. His running mate, Francia Marquez, would become Colombia’s first Black vice president if the pair is elected.

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Petro’s campaign has focused on economic and environmental matters, including a promise to transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydropower. However, with oil and coal accounting for nearly 60 percent of Colombia’s total exports, his opponents argue this vision isn’t realistic. He has also pledged to combat income inequality [PDF], tax the rich, reform the health-care and pension systems, and weed out corruption.

Federico “Fico” Gutierrez. A civil engineer by training and the former mayor of Medellin, Gutierrez is the leading conservative candidate. He draws support from a coalition of center-right parties that includes former President Alvaro Uribe as well as supporters of President Duque. Best known for his tough-on-crime policies, Gutierrez has promised to restore law and order to a country where social unrest, crime rates, and cartel activity are on the rise.

While he has championed his own anti-poverty policies, including boosting wages and expanding social assistance, he has attacked Petro’s economic plans as being too radical and potentially disastrous. Gutierrez has compared Petro’s candidacy to that of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who oversaw a socialist overhaul of Venezuela and whose successor, Nicolas Maduro, has systematically dismantled the country’s democracy.

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Enrique Gomez, Luis Perez, Ingrid Betancourt, Gustavo Petro, and John Milton Rodriguez pose during a debate on March 29, 2022, in Bogota, Colombia.
Enrique Gomez, Luis Perez, Ingrid Betancourt, Gustavo Petro, and John Milton Rodriguez pose during a debate on March 29, 2022, in Bogota, Colombia. Luisa Gonzalez/Reuters

Who else is running?

Other candidates are polling far behind, but there are some notable contenders:

  • Ingrid Betancourt is a former senator who was held prisoner by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) for more than six years. Her campaign focuses on countering corruption, securing reparations for victims of armed conflicts, and bolstering environmental protections.
  • Sergio Fajardo is a trained mathematician as well as a former mayor and governor. He has unsuccessfully run for president three times, and his proposals center on improving education and an ambitious tax reform.
  • Rodolfo Hernandez is an independent and relatively new to politics, having previously only served as mayor of a departmental capital. Hernandez has gained attention for his unconventional proposals, including calls to legalize cocaine, and his anticorruption stance.

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What will be the biggest challenges for the incoming administration?

Addressing inequality and poverty will rank near the top now that the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed more than 3.6 million Colombians into poverty. Colombia remains one of the most unequal countries in the region, with nearly 40 percent of the population now living below the poverty line and an unemployment rate that has averaged above 11 percent for the past two decades. Inflation reached 5.6 percent in 2021, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could further complicate matters; the war has hiked up commodity prices, sparking concerns of continued social unrest, even as international sanctions on Russia have increased demand for Colombia’s oil. 

Then there is the worsening security situation. The homicide rate rose during the pandemic, and cocaine production has surged to record highs. Fighting has also escalated between guerrilla groups, with splinter factions of the FARC and the National Liberation Army (ELN) competing over drug routes on the Colombia-Venezuela border, while the Gulf Clan launched an armed strike in northern Colombia in protest of its leader’s extradition to the United States.

Meanwhile, Colombia is still a top destination in the region for migrants, especially Venezuelans, nearly two million of whom live in the country. Others from African countries, Cuba, and Haiti cross through Colombia’s Darien Gap on their way to the United States. In turn, the United States continues to expel migrants back to Colombia under Title 42, a controversial public health order. But public opinion on the Colombian government’s open-door policy for Venezuelans is changing: in February, more than half of Colombians surveyed said they favored a more restrictive approach.

A map of Colombia with relevant data points such as population (49 million), GDP ($271 billion), and GDP per capita ($5,335).

How could the result shape the peace accords between the FARC and the Colombian government?

Renewed guerrilla violence has underscored the fragility of peace in Colombia. The peace deal signed in 2016 ended more than five decades of war and granted the FARC political legitimacy in exchange for several concessions, including an immediate cease-fire and disarmament. However, many right-wing politicians oppose the deal over concerns that it offers impunity for crimes committed, and implementation of it has slowed under President Duque.  

Both leading candidates say they support the deal, though their proposed approaches to implementation differ. Petro has said he would renew commitment to the deal, as well as look to reach separate agreements with dissident FARC groups and the ELN. Analysts say his dedication to the deal is likely to attract voters, even as his background as a former guerrilla dissuades others. Gutierrez, who has criticized the FARC for failing to uphold their part of the deal, says he would focus on increasing security measures and expanding opportunities for ex-combatants. Regardless of who wins, experts say major aspects of the deal have already fallen behind schedule.

What else is at stake?

A victory for Petro would add Colombia to the growing list of Latin American countries—including Chile and Peru—that have chosen outsider candidates in recent elections. It could also stress Colombia’s close relations with the United States. Some of Petro’s foreign policy views worry Washington, including his proposal to restore diplomatic relations with Venezuela and the possibility that he would cooperate with China and Russia; the White House has already warned of possible Russian interference in the election. He is also an outspoken critic of the U.S.-led war on drugs and hopes to renegotiate the U.S.-Colombia trade agreement, which he argues hurts Colombian farmers and manufacturers. 

In contrast, Gutierrez advocates for stronger ties with the United States. His proposed agenda also emphasizes increasing Colombia’s role in regional institutions such as the Organization of American States; bolstering protections for migrants; and creating regionwide, multilateral initiatives that address issues such as drug trafficking and terrorism.

Will Merrow created the map for this In Brief.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Sign up to receive CFR President Mike Froman’s analysis on the most important foreign policy story of the week, delivered to your inbox every Friday afternoon. Subscribe to The World This Week. In the Middle East, Israel and Iran are engaged in what could be the most consequential conflict in the region since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. CFR’s experts continue to cover all aspects of the evolving conflict on CFR.org. While the situation evolves, including the potential for direct U.S. involvement, it is worth touching on another recent development in the region which could have far-reaching consequences: the diffusion of cutting-edge U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) technology to leading Gulf powers. The defining feature of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is his willingness to question and, in many cases, reject the prevailing consensus on matters ranging from European security to trade. His approach to AI policy is no exception. Less than six months into his second term, Trump is set to fundamentally rewrite the United States’ international AI strategy in ways that could influence the balance of global power for decades to come. In February, at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, Vice President JD Vance delivered a rousing speech at the Grand Palais, and made it clear that the Trump administration planned to abandon the Biden administration’s safety-centric approach to AI governance in favor of a laissez-faire regulatory regime. “The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety,” Vance said. “It will be won by building—from reliable power plants to the manufacturing facilities that can produce the chips of the future.” And as Trump’s AI czar David Sacks put it, “Washington wants to control things, the bureaucracy wants to control things. That’s not a winning formula for technology development. We’ve got to let the private sector cook.” The accelerationist thrust of Vance and Sacks’s remarks is manifesting on a global scale. Last month, during Trump’s tour of the Middle East, the United States announced a series of deals to permit the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia to import huge quantities (potentially over one million units) of advanced AI chips to be housed in massive new data centers that will serve U.S. and Gulf AI firms that are training and operating cutting-edge models. These imports were made possible by the Trump administration’s decision to scrap a Biden administration executive order that capped chip exports to geopolitical swing states in the Gulf and beyond, and which represents the most significant proliferation of AI capabilities outside the United States and China to date. The recipe for building and operating cutting-edge AI models has a few key raw ingredients: training data, algorithms (the governing logic of AI models like ChatGPT), advanced chips like Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) or Tensor Processing Units (TPUs)—and massive, power-hungry data centers filled with advanced chips.  Today, the United States maintains a monopoly of only one of these inputs: advanced semiconductors, and more specifically, the design of advanced semiconductors—a field in which U.S. tech giants like Nvidia and AMD, remain far ahead of their global competitors. To weaponize this chokepoint, the first Trump administration and the Biden administration placed a series of ever-stricter export controls on the sale of advanced U.S.-designed AI chips to countries of concern, including China.  The semiconductor export control regime culminated in the final days of the Biden administration with the rollout of the Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion, more commonly known as the AI diffusion rule—a comprehensive global framework for limiting the proliferation of advanced semiconductors. The rule sorted the world into three camps. Tier 1 countries, including core U.S. allies such as Australia, Japan, and the United Kingdom, were exempt from restrictions, whereas tier 3 countries, such as Russia, China, and Iran, were subject to the extremely stringent controls. The core controversy of the diffusion rule stemmed from the tier 2 bucket, which included some 150 countries including India, Mexico, Israel, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Many tier 2 states, particularly Gulf powers with deep economic and military ties to the United States, were furious.  The rule wasn’t just a matter of how many chips could be imported and by whom. It refashioned how the United States could steer the distribution of computing resources, including the regulation and real-time monitoring of their deployment abroad and the terms by which the technologies can be shared with third parties. Proponents of the restrictions pointed to the need to limit geopolitical swing states’ access to leading AI capabilities and to prevent Chinese, Russian, and other adversarial actors from accessing powerful AI chips by contracting cloud service providers in these swing states.  However, critics of the rule, including leading AI model developers and cloud service providers, claimed that the constraints would stifle U.S. innovation and incentivize tier 2 countries to adopt Chinese AI infrastructure. Moreover, critics argued that with domestic capital expenditures on AI development and infrastructure running into the hundreds of billions of dollars in 2025 alone, fresh capital and scale-up opportunities in the Gulf and beyond represented the most viable option for expanding the U.S. AI ecosystem. This hypothesis is about to be tested in real time. In May, the Trump administration killed the diffusion rule, days before it would have been set into motion, in part to facilitate the export of these cutting-edge chips abroad to the Gulf powers. This represents a fundamental pivot for AI policy, but potentially also in the logic of U.S. grand strategy vis-à-vis China. The most recent era of great power competition, the Cold War, was fundamentally bipolar and the United States leaned heavily on the principle of non-proliferation, particularly in the nuclear domain, to limit the possibility of new entrants. We are now playing by a new set of rules where the diffusion of U.S. technology—and an effort to box out Chinese technology—is of paramount importance. Perhaps maintaining and expanding the United States’ global market share in key AI chokepoint technologies will deny China the scale it needs to outcompete the United States—but it also introduces the risk of U.S. chips falling into the wrong hands via transhipment, smuggling, and other means, or being co-opted by authoritarian regimes for malign purposes.  Such risks are not illusory: there is already ample evidence of Chinese firms using shell entities to access leading-edge U.S. chips through cloud service providers in Southeast Asia. And Chinese firms, including Huawei, were important vendors for leading Gulf AI firms, including the UAE’s G-42, until the U.S. government forced the firm to divest its Chinese hardware as a condition for receiving a strategic investment from Microsoft in 2024. In the United States, the ability to build new data centers is severely constrained by complex permitting processes and limited capacity to bring new power to the grid. What the Gulf countries lack in terms of semiconductor prowess and AI talent, they make up for with abundant capital, energy, and accommodating regulations. The Gulf countries are well-positioned for massive AI infrastructure buildouts. The question is simply, using whose technology—American or Chinese—and on what terms? In Saudi Arabia and the UAE, it will be American technology for now. The question remains whether the diffusion of the most powerful dual-use technologies of our day will bind foreign users to the United States and what impact it will have on the global balance of power.  We welcome your feedback on this column. Let me know what foreign policy issues you’d like me to address next by replying to [email protected].

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