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Weekly Report - 29 October 2015 (WR-15-43)

COLOMBIA: Elections produce clear winners and losers

The biggest winner did not actually run in the regional and municipal elections on 25 October. Vice-President Germán Vargas Lleras saw his prospects of landing the top job in 2018 boosted by the results obtained by his party, Cambio Radical (CR). The biggest losers were the Left and the Right. The left-wing Polo Democrático Alternativo (PDA) saw its 12-year control of the capital ended by Enrique Peñalosa, a CR-backed independent returning for a second stint as mayor of Bogotá. The right-wing Centro Democrático (CD) of Senator Alvaro Uribe suffered disappointing defeats in Bogotá and the former president’s native department of Antioquia. President Juan Manuel Santos had been on course to be a winner. The parties in his ruling coalition did well nationwide and election day was the most peaceful for decades but the very next day the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) killed a dozen members of the security forces carrying ballot boxes back from a remote polling station in Boyacá department.

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