00:00Colombia will hold its presidential elections in four months and according
00:04to the latest polls the left-wing candidate Ivan Cepeda is in the lead
00:07followed by the far-right candidate. Let's look at the details with our
00:10colleague Hernán Tobar.
00:13In May, Colombians will go to the polls to elect their next president. The most
00:19recent poll published by private media shows a leading voting intentions for
00:23Senator Ivan Cepeda, the left-wing candidate, with 38%, followed by the
00:29right-wing candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella, with 22%.
00:36A large percentage of the vote is around Ivan Cepeda, who is leading in the polls and has
00:41the best chance in almost all second-round scenarios, versus a poll of an extreme
00:46right outsider, the type of candidate that has been promoted from the sector, let's
00:50call it this new populist right in Latin America, which is very quick to respond,
00:58not very favorable to the rule of law and compliance with certain rules, especially
01:04the control of powers, and are looking to recreate the same figure. All of the candidates
01:09resemble Bukele, all of the candidates resemble Milley. If they are not tigers, they are lying
01:13on any other large cat that is unoccupied at the time to create the candidate image.
01:17The voting projection that currently favors the left-wing candidate and the governing party,
01:24the historical pact response, according to analysts, to the fact that a large part of
01:30Colombian society continues to support a policy of consolidation and deepening of social transformations
01:36neglected by previous right-wing governments. The truth is that the country is polarized.
01:42Iván Cepeda's extremely high approval ratings demonstrate the success of the government of
01:47change, and that the majority of Colombians continue to support the proposal for profound
01:51change in Colombia. And the rise of Abelardo de las Priera as the candidate of the far-right
01:56also reveals that there is a sector of society that is deeply retroactive to these changes,
02:01which sees in the figure of Álvaro Uribe, and in this case Abelardo, someone who can express
02:05their fears and doubts about in the face of the changes that are taking place.
02:12Warnings on the subject once again focus on the origin of the service themselves, as the
02:17strategy of using this type of tool to serve the ideological agendas of the ruling classes,
02:22which may be putting pressure on their electorate in this context, is not new.
02:28Poling companies know that they are instruments for shaping ideology and opinion, and in that
02:35sense, they must also follow an agenda. The question to ask is how it suits the far-right
02:41for Iván Cepeda to appear with such a large lead in the polls. In other words, these polls
02:47should be read not only as something informative, but also as a reflection of the political intentions
02:53of the sectors that dominate these polling companies and that are interested in implementing
02:58a certain framework of interpretation.
03:00This is the outlook for the upcoming presidential elections in Colombia, with the first round
03:07scheduled for Sunday in May 31st of this year.
03:10Hernán Darío Tobar, Gaitán Telesur, Bogotá, Colombia.
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