‘You Can’t Combat Corruption with Phrases on TikTok’: Gustavo Petro Denounces Flashy Competitor As Colombian Presidential Election Heads to Second Round
Voters in Colombia turned out in large numbers for the first round of the presidential election held on Sunday. Here is a scene from a university polling site in Calí / credit: Julie Varughese
CALÍ, Colombia—Former militant-turned-politician Gustavo Petro had sharp words for his flashy millionaire opponent, who is thought to have won votes among the Colombian youth because of his presence on a social media platform.
“You can’t combat corruption with phrases on TikTok,” Petro told a crowd on Sunday night in Bogotá. He referred to Rodolfo Hernández, 77, who ran his campaign on ending corruption based on his success in the construction industry.
During Sunday’s first round of the presidential election, Petro did not garner the 50 percent needed to avoid a second round on June 19. He won 40 percent of votes while Hernández received 28 percent. The first round attracted 47 percent of the country’s 39 million registered voters.
Rodolfo Hernández, a millionaire who ran in Colombia’s presidential election on an anti-corruption platform, heads to the second round to run against left-wing Gustavo Petro / credit: Wikipedia / Programas Telemedellin
Hernández, who ran on the League of Anti-Corruption Governors ticket, has been compared to former U.S. President Donald Trump and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, both known for sex scandals and off-the-cuff remarks. However, what might help Hernández win the presidency is an alliance of right-wing and center-right candidates who had run in the first round. Competitors like right-wing Team for Colombia coalition candidate Federíco Gutiérrez and center-right-wing Hope Center coalition candidate Sergio Fajardo announced their support for Hernández in their concession speeches Sunday night.
Ajamu Baraka, an advisor to Francia Márquez, Petro’s vice-presidential running mate, said right-wing forces combined with systematic voter suppression through violence and intimidation will make it difficult for the Pacto Histórico ticket to pull off a win.
“Turnout is going to be key, but as we saw yesterday, there are areas where paramilitary forces intentionally prevented communities from voting,” he said. “Communities that—if they voted—they would have voted for the Historic Pact.”
A rear view of election workers at a polling site at Ciudadela Comfandi, a neighborhood in Calí / credit: Julie Varughese
AfroResistance, a group that advocates for Afro-descendant women and girls in the Americas, helped organize a 29-woman election observer delegation, the largest group of observers in the history of Colombia’s elections organized through Misión de Observación Electoral (Electoral Observation Mission). Half of the group observed the process in Calí, while the other half monitored in the predominantly Afro-descendant port city of Buenaventura.
Election observers founded irregularities in Buenaventura, where a 2017 civil strike shut down the country’s main port on the Pacific Ocean for 22 days.
Militant-turned-politician Gustavo Petro is seen as the inevitable Pacto Histórico candidate in this year’s presidential election in Colombia / credit: Facebook / Gustavo Petro
Representatives from Pacto Histórico—the left-wing coalition Petro ran his campaign through—were kidnapped and disappeared from the polling site after the group of observers left. Parties were permitted to keep party observers at each voting station. After consulting with a Buenaventura-based observer, the observers decided to not return to the site to inquire. Election officials were not immediately available to comment to Toward Freedom.
Buenaventura is known for “chop houses,” buildings where paramilitaries have been known to cut adversaries’ bodies alive as a warning to others. Paramilitaries in Colombia have guarded for years the production and flow of drugs out of the country. Meanwhile, the United States has for 22 years poured $4.5 billion in the form of military training and arms into Colombia.
Voting appears to go smoothly in another voting station in Calí. Local activist Charo Mina Rojas (@renacientes) says many more people are voting, but fear of the repercussions for expressing opinions have kept campaign signage on cars and buildings to a minimum. #ColombiaDecidepic.twitter.com/Vf9ULHIcrm
Jemima Pierre, an AfroResistance delegation observer who represented the Black Alliance for Peace as the organization’s Haiti/Americas Coordinator, said polling stations in Calí were categorized on a range of one to six, with six representing the most affluent neighborhoods. She and her group of observers were assigned to visit polling stations that ranged between three and six. They noticed the more affluent neighborhoods contained biometric machines that checked voter identification cards.
“It seemed to me there was a correlation between class, color, access,” she said.
Charo Mina Rojas, a member of Proceso de Comunidades Negras, an alliance of Afro-descendant organizations in Colombia, shows her voter registration card after voting for Gustavo Petro on Sunday in the first round of the presidential election / credit: Julie Varughese
Charo Mina Rojas, a member of Proceso de Comunidades Negras, an alliance of Afro-descendant organizations in Colombia, said it’s normal for people to post signs of campaigns they support on their cars and homes. This year was different, though.
“It’s a lot more low-profile, low-key this time,” she said, adding she hadn’t heard people openly speaking about for whom they are voting. “It’s hard to know. I think some people feel afraid of saying who they are voting for because it’s so contested and kind of dangerous for some of us.”
Indeed, many voters declined to speak with this reporter outside a poll in Calí, citing their fear.
“People may be voting for a change, but keeping it quiet to keep safe,” Mina said after voting at a poll in Calí.
But some voters were happy to share their perspectives with Toward Freedom.
“[Change] depends on us. We have to stop what’s been happening for years,” said Jaime Rodriguez, 69, commenting on decades of paramilitary violence tied to the Colombian elites and U.S. control of the state. That’s why he said he voted for Petro. “The government meddles everywhere.”
Margarita Ramirez, a retired marketing firm researcher who spent her career traveling through urban and remote areas of the country, told Toward Freedom she voted for Petro.
“The situation of the people in the city is very different from the situation in the rural areas,” she said, describing her travels to Amazonian areas like Arauca, where she witnessed a mother with no food to feed her children breakfast. The World Bank states 35 percent of Colombians live in poverty. Only 69 percent of Colombians eat three meals per day. “Those people do not have access to electricity, to water, to education, to food. There is no dignity.”
Meanwhile, in the cities, house maids can work upwards of 13 hours a day, leaving their children to fend for themselves, said Ramirez, 59.
“Why don’t those people help those people’s children have access to shoes, to education?” she asked. “It’s time for a change.”
Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom. She recently reported on Colombia’s presidential elections here and here.
Nigeria’s president has scolded Western diplomats for their comments about the way the February 25 presidential election is being run, warning against foreign meddling. Countries across Africa are up against Western-backed coup attempts and Western-supported disinformation campaigns. African Stream reports.
Celebrations in the northern Nicaraguan city of Estelí on November 8, the day after the elections. President Daniel Ortega won re-election by more than 75 percent / credit: twitter/maria_arauz
This is the second in a series of articles on Nicaragua’s November 7 elections. The first article can be found here.
The Republic of Nicaragua announced on November 19 its intention to pull out of the Organization of American States (OAS), in the latest in a series of events that have transpired in the small country’s struggle with the United States and its allies.
Earlier in the week, U.S. President Joe Biden issued a proclamation that prevents certain Nicaraguan officials—including President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo—from entering the United States because they allegedly prevented a “free and fair” election.
The suspension of travel comes amid an escalation of aggression against the Central American country that the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN for short) has governed for the past 15 years.
Aside from the travel ban, the United States slapped sanctions November 15 on Nicaraguan officials. The Organization of American States (OAS) also voted on November 12 to approve a resolution that condemned Nicaragua’s elections as not “free and fair” and called for “further action.”
“We are not concerned about the illegal measures the U.S. imposes against government officials or against Sandinistas,” said Nicaraguan Minister Advisor for Foreign Affairs Michael Campbell after Nicaragua’s National Assembly denounced the travel ban.
However, many myths continue to circulate in the corporate media about Nicaragua’s elections. This reporter was in Nicaragua to cover the elections and reported in a November 14 article on ordinary people’s opinions of the government. Toward Freedom believes it is necessary to report answers to commonly misreported beliefs.
Did the Ortega Government Ban Opposition Parties?
The following parties were registered to run in the November 7 elections:
Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (Constitutionalist Liberal Party or PLC)
Alianza FSLN (Alliance of Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional or Sandinista National Liberation Front Alliance, which is made up of nine parties)
Camino Cristiano Nicaragüense (Nicaraguan Christian Way or CCN)
Alianza Liberal Nicaragüense (Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance or ALN)
Alianza por la República (Alliance for the Republic or APRE)
Partido Liberal Independiente (Independent Liberal Party or PLI)
The Caribbean Coast has two autonomous regions. Indigenous peoples run the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region while Afro-descended people control the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region. Unlike voters in the rest of the country, people in these regions could choose a seventh party when voting for regional candidates. That party was called the Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Aslatakanka (YATAMA).
Parties were allowed to campaign from August 21 to November 3, but rallies were prohibited because of COVID-19 restrictions.
Why Is Daniel Ortega So Popular?
This year’s election can only be viewed in the context of the 2018 coup attempt that has the United States’ fingerprints all over it because of heavy U.S. funding to groups that carried out violence that killed more than 300 Nicaraguans, many of whom were Sandinistas. Nicaraguans say they continue to feel emotionally impacted by the events of that year. Nicaraguan farmers were devastated by the “tranques” or barricades coupmongers built on roads that blocked trade, as reported in a November 14 article. Below is a video of one college student, who recounted her experience and decried the United States’ role.
Hear from college student Daniela as she recounts her experience during the violent US backed coup attempt that rocked Nicaragua in 2018.
This is the death & destruction the US would like to see more of in Latin America, all in the name of "democracy." pic.twitter.com/gtG5HEXVm9
Government officials explained the economic impact of the 2018 coup attempt at a summit for international election companions and accredited press held the day before the elections. Nicaragua’s Central Bank President Ovidio Reyes said the country has experienced negative Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth since 2018. “Just as we were getting out of that cycle, the pandemic struck,” he said, adding two recent hurricanes on the Caribbean coast also impacted trade. However, this year, the country started to see the economy turn around. Much of that officials credit to the country’s policy of increased public health initiatives in lieu of a nationwide lockdown, which they say would have hurt the small country. “If we don’t work, we don’t eat,” said Laureano Ortega, who promotes Nicaragua to foreign investors, repeating the words of his father, President Daniel Ortega. And so came door-to-door visits to provide information, as well as a campaign involving mask wearing, handwashing and social distancing. As a result, Nicaragua has what appears to be the lowest amount of COVID-19-related deaths in the Western Hemisphere.
Why Are Nicaraguan Opposition Leaders in Jail?
In 2020, Nicaragua’s National Assembly passed Law 1055 or the “Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination for Peace”. Under this law, it is a crime to seek foreign interference in the country’s internal affairs, request military intervention, organize acts of terrorism and destabilization, promote coercive economic, commercial and financial measures against the country and its institutions, or request and welcome sanctions against Nicaragua’s state apparatus and its citizens.
Nicaragua also has a law called article 90, chapter IV, that governs the financing of electoral campaigns, according to government documents.
“The financing system for parties or alliances of parties establishes that they may not receive donations from state or mixed institutions, whether national or foreign, or from private institutions, when they are foreigners or nationals while abroad. They may not receive donations from any type of foreign entity for any purpose.”
Article 91 also prohibits foreign donations to elections.
Article 92 lays out the punishment for breaking electoral finance laws. Consequences can include candidates paying a fine, being eliminated from running for elected or party positions, and being barred from serving in a public office from two to six years.
The Ortega government had offered amnesty in 2019 to opposition members who had helped organize the 2018 coup attempt. However, opposition leaders this year have faced arrest and jail time because they violated the above laws. The corporate media has used the terms “pre-candidates” and “presidential hopefuls” to describe these people.
Many countries around the world, including the United States, prohibit accepting money from foreign governments, foreign private institutions or individuals who are based abroad.
Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) governs elections and is considered the fourth branch of the country’s government. The same cannot be said in the United States, for example. The CSE is comprised of members from each of the 19 political parties that can register to run a candidate in the elections.
Weren’t Opposition Parties Barred from Participating?
After 100 percent of votes were counted, the FSLN prevailed with more than 75 percent. The second-place party, Partido Liberal Constitutionalista (PLC), received 14 percent, while other parties picked up only single-digit percentages. All opposition parties are anti-Sandinista.
#EleccionesSoberanas2021🇳🇮| Tercer Informe con 100% de Juntas escrutadas y computadas Elección: Presidente/a Vicepresidente/a🗳
— Consejo Supremo Electoral de Nicaragua 🇳🇮 (@cse_nicaragua) November 10, 2021
In the run-up to Election Day, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced the “sham of an election.” In doing so, he reinforced the foundation for increased U.S. aggression on the small country, about the size of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.
However, this reporter and close to 70 other journalists reporting on the elections found a calm and organized voting process at stations we visited across the country. Some of the protocols involved included:
Voters must display special identification created just for voting purposes to voting station workers
Voters names can be found in a computer database and on paper
One voter per station (which was usually the size of a classroom)
Handwashing, hand sanitizer and masks were provided
Ballots indicate parties along with the photos of each of the presidential candidates
Ballots are inserted into a box after voting
All ballots are counted at voting centers, not transported to another site as has been seen in the United States, which has resulted in missing ballots being found on streets and claims of fraud
Members of each political party participating in the elections were in the voting centers to monitor vote counting
How Do the Opposition Relate to the Ortega Government?
Below is a video (courtesy of Friends of Latin America) that shows two opposition-party monitors—one from the Independent Liberal Party (PLI) and the other from the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC)—explaining that they both oppose what they deem “intolerance” among a certain section of the Nicaraguan opposition that supported the violence of the 2018 attempted coup. They also condemned U.S. sanctions, which they said would affect all Nicaraguans, regardless of political affiliation.
In the following video by Ramiro Sebastián Fúnez, a former Contra militant leader explains why she allied with the Sandinistas and the Ortega government.
Were Foreign Journalists and International Observers Allowed In Nicaragua?
This reporter, as well as 66 other journalists, were accredited as press prior to the elections. Not a single journalist on the ground reported seeing or hearing of their colleagues being banned from entering. A few election companions had trouble entering Nicaragua if they did not provide a negative COVID-19 test result on a printed document that contained both the seal from the testing facility as well as a doctor’s signature.
Meanwhile, no journalists from corporate media outlets were on the ground. Yet, outlets like the New York Times went on to claim the elections were dubious in nature. One Times reporter, Natalie Kitroeff, was met with facts from journalists on the ground while she tweeted from Mexico City that the elections were rigged.
Absurd fake news from US gov't mouthpiece NY Times: Unlike this propagandist I'm actually in Nicaragua, reporting on the elections
I went to 4 different voting stations; they were all full, with a totally calm, transparent process
Aside from 67 journalists, 165 international “accompañantes electoral,” or election companions, were allowed to participate. The journalists and election companions traveled from 27 countries. Some flew from as far away as Russia and China, while 70 election companions traveled from the United States.
Despite corporate media’s claims of being denied access to Nicaragua, this reporter only knows of one journalist who was denied access. But the Nicaraguan government wasn’t involved. Steve Sweeney, international editor at the Morning Star, a socialist newspaper in the United Kingdom, tweeted he had been detained in Mexico en route to cover the Nicaragua elections. Over three days, he was denied food and medical access as a diabetic, as he describes in the tweet below.
Coverage of my detention in Mexico where I was held in conditions some are describing as torture, having food withheld for three days.
Meanwhile, the corporate media has not raised their voices to decry the conditions under which Wikileaks Publisher Julian Assange and independent journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal have been held, both of whom the United Nations has reported are being tortured in prison.
Only one European Parliament member attended. Mick Wallace represents Ireland in the parliament and opposed the European Union cooperating with the United States to engage in a hybrid war against Nicaragua. He can be seen expressing opposition in the video below that he tweeted on November 11.
Recent statements from MEP's + #EU Officials on the #Nicaragua Elections have no basis in reality, are an affront to the people of Nicaragua + #UN Charter's principle of non-interference – Only crime is that they've pushed back against #US Imperialism to help their own people… pic.twitter.com/0mBaH796dB
A “hybrid war” is a term historian Vijay Prashad uses to describe the documented U.S. policy of wearing down a country’s defenses through “unconventional” tactics such as economic sanctions, funding proxy groups and NGOs, and distributing misinformation.
Nicaragua decided not to use the term “election observers” because of how OAS and EU election observers in the past had used their role to legitimize meddling in the country’s affairs, according to Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry representatives. Because of that history, as well as the OAS’ documented role in helping create the 2019 coup in Bolivia, Nicaragua did not allow the OAS to send election companions.
Were Nicaraguans Prevented From Voting?
Despite mainstream media claiming people were sometimes violently kept from voting, journalists on the ground in cities as diverse as Bilwi in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, Bluefields in the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region and in the Pacific northwestern city of Chinandega found a free, fair and transparent process in which Nicaraguans voted. Voters in Bilwi told The Convo Couch, a U.S.-based media outlet, that the government’s response after two hurricanes last year hit the Caribbean coast solidified support for the FSLN.
The Foreign’s Ministry’s Campbell told journalists 10 departments (Estelí, Chinandega, León, Rivas, Chontales, Matagalpa, Masaya, Granada, Carazo and Managua) and two autonomous regions contained 63 voting centers and 791 voting stations.
Everywhere foreign journalists and election companions visited contained a peaceful and orderly voting process. Voters expressed gratitude and pride in their country’s elections, which took a year to plan, according to government officials.
Many journalists recorded election workers supporting elderly and disabled people to vote, many times carrying them to voting stations.
Below are videos journalists on the ground developed to show how voting looked in different Nicaraguan cities.
Voting in Bilwi
Voting in Bluefields
Voting in Chinandega
Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom. She spent a week traveling through Nicaragua as part of a delegation organized by the Associación de Trabajadores del Campo (Rural Workers’ Association, or the ATC for short), an independent farm workers’ organization.
Part of a drumline at the July 24 protest in front of the Philippine consulate in New York City to counter the new Philippine president’s State of the Union Address / credit: Cygaelle Bergado
NEW YORK CITY–Hours before Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr., gave his first State of the Nation address on July 24, Filipino people throughout the world protested, holding their own “People’s State of the Union Address,” or PSONA.
“The Marcos-Duterte oligarchic symbiosis represents one of the biggest barriers for progress in the Philippines,” Gabriel Rivera told Toward Freedom amid a crowd of about 200 Filipinos who had gathered outside the Philippine consulate in midtown Manhattan, just a few blocks from the United Nations.
As a drumline’s rhythms echoed through the city streets, Filipinos spoke out against Marcos and his vice president, Sara Duterte, both of whom had been elected to office in the island nation on May 9.
Part of a drumline at the July 24 protest in front of the Philippine consulate in New York City to counter the new Philippine president’s State of the Union Address / credit: Cygaelle Bergado
The families of Marcos and Duterte have been accused of violating human rights. That includes during the 1972-81 Martial Law Era under Marcos’ father, Ferdinand Sr., and during former President Rodrigo Duterte’s War on Drugs, which has killed over 6,229 alleged drug users since 2016. Rodrigo is the new vice president’s father.
“Two historically violent dynasties with no regard for human rights or the rule of law have just been seated on the two highest positions in the land,” said Rivera, a member of the Malaya Movement, a progressive Filipino organization advocating for human rights in the Philippines. “I am terrified to even imagine how this could affect generations of Filipinos to come.”
To counter the violence in their homeland, grassroots Filipino organizations from the Northeast Coalition to Advance Genuine Democracy, such as Migrante, GABRIELA, Malaya Movement, Anakbayan and Bayan, assembled for the New York City rally. This rally was one of many held around the world for PSONA, an annual global grassroots event, during which Filipinos report on human-rights violations in their homeland to counter the Philippine president’s annual State of the Nation address that takes place on the same day.
A map of the Philippines, consisting of thousands of islands / credit: Google Maps
The Philippines is a U.S. ally that has waged a war on its own population, killing alleged drug addicts and traffickers. Since 2002, the United States has shipped almost $900 million in arms and has provided more than $1.3 billion in security assistance to the Philippines.
The scene at the July 24 protest held outside the Philippine consulate in New York City / credit: Cygaelle Bergado
In an interview with Toward Freedom, 25-year-old Momo Manalang denounced the disappearance of three Filipino women activists, allegedly abducted by the Filipino government. She demanded their return.
“Our movement is intergenerational, comprised of both martial-law survivors of families of those slain during the War on Drugs, which persists to this day under Bongbong Marcos,” said Manalang, a member of GABRIELA, a mass-based organization focusing on womens’ rights in the Philippines. “It is imperative as a diaspora to register our condemnation and call for the accountability of both regimes for their crimes against humanity.”
A.J. Santos, a migrant from the Philippines, recounted to Toward Freedom how these administrations have directly affected his family.
“My mom fought Ferdinand Marcos, Sr., during Martial Law and was even hunted by the military while her friends and comrades were tortured and killed,” said Santos, 38, of Migrante, a grassroots organization consisting of migrant Filipinos. “And Duterte, he killed five of my friends with his so-called ‘War on Drugs.’”
Protesters lined up July 24 behind Shirley Atienza of Filipino grassroots migrant group Migrante as she read aloud the demands to the Philippine government of the Northeast Coalition to Advance Genuine Democracy / credit: Cygaelle Bergado
Shirley Atienza, a New York-based Filipino migrant and Migrante member, read aloud the nine points of the “People’s Agenda for Change,” while protesters standing behind her held signs outlining each. In bold black paint, they read:
Regulate prices
Revive local agriculture
Enact land reform and national industrialization
Defend and promote human rights
Defend freedom of press + speech
Institute a democratic, ethical and accountable government
Provide free health care and basic social services
Uphold national sovereignty and independent foreign policy
Ensure country’s natural wealth and resources
A Filipino protester at the Philippine consulate in New York City wears an effigy to call out human-rights violations in the Philippines / credit: Cygaelle Bergado
A protester had adorned cardboard signs to their body in an effigy that listed human-rights violations committed in the Philippines. Painted to look like flames, the signs read:
“Extreme inflation & economic crisis,”
“2.9 million unemployed,”
“Forced migration/separated families,” and
“Selling out to foreign interests.
The flames were surrounded by cardboard replicas of gas cans that read, “Corrupt family dynasties own all the land, make all the laws,” “US tax $$ funds Philippine Drug War,” and “Historical revisionism & fake news.”
At the top of the protester’s head sat a gas can that read “Marcos.” Draped around their back was the Filipino flag. As participants gathered to smash the gas cans, the crowd recited, “Makibaka! Huwog matakot!” (Struggle! Do not be afraid!) and other revolutionary Filipino chants, cheering for the downfall of Marcos and Duterte.
Being oceans away from their home country doesn’t stop these Filipino revolutionaries from fighting. At least not Theo Aguila, a 25-year-old organizer from Anakbayan, a mass organization consisting of Filipino youth and students.
“It is through action both here and [in] the Philippines that we may enact change for our motherland.”
Cygaelle Bergado is the Summer 2022 Claudia Jones Editorial Intern for Toward Freedom. She can be followed on Twitter at @cy_bergado.
