Politics aside, dude seems like a genuine scumbag.
Colombian here, I can give some context, at least from my perspective.
Current president is Petro, a left wing president. Cepeda is the candidate from there same party. Abelardo is the far right candidato that won.
Petro has done an awful job. I’ll add some examples in a comment. Cepeda seems better than Petro, but lacks criticism against him.
On the other hand Abelardo got sold as an outsider to the classical politics, as he came out of nowhere, and 1 year ago nobody knew who he was. He’s actually been an ally of Uribe (our most controversial president in recent history; far right as well) and the traditional right, just simply not as involved in politics. He also got his fortune by defending and being an ally of criminals (think an IRL Saul Goodman). He’s beyond awful and like OP said, a genuine scumbag (e.g., in an interview, he laughed while remembering how he used kill cats with explosives).
Some people were gonna vote against Petro no matter what. Some people really ate the lies that Abelardo, a man that got his fortune by allying with criminals, will fight really hard against criminals. Some people think both candidates were awful, and had to choose the least awful of both of them. And that’s how we got him as our next president.
Examples of Petro’s missmanagments:
For context, keep in mind Colombia is a rather poor country, that has been in an armed conflict spanning several decades.
See for example his “Total peace” program, in which he wanted to resolve conflicts with armed groups via dialogue rather than violence. While this sounds very good on paper, the reality is that the majority of said groups simply acted in bad faith, and used the program as an opportunity to grow bigger. Number of combatants in said groups grew like 50%; extorsions: up 25%; terrorism: up 90%; kidnappings: up 290% (!). And yet he and Cepeda insists on the program, instead of realizing you can’t take that route with some groups that simply act in bad faith.
Both of them are also pushing for a “Constitution Asambly”, a way in which we can create a complete new Constitution. Our current one is from 1991 and allows it to be constantly modified, but enforces some limitations of power to the president, which they want to remove (like the CNE, an election overviewer and also the National Bank independence from there current president’s hands). He famously promised not to do that in both his 2018 and 2022 campaigns, but once he got elected, started pushing for it in 2024.
Health sector also got hit baddly (it was bad, but not this bad), corruption has been rampant (which, being fair, has always been the case) and the country got bankrupted. Petro genuinely also looks like he’s constantly high in drugs, I’m not even kidding.
He’s also constantly crying on Twitter about how the elections have been fraudulent, despite not showing evidence, or spreading missionformation proved to be false. All of these generate an uneasy feeling of his party keeping the power for other 4 years.
Man, Colombia can’t catch break, can it?
I’ll start making a bingo card for this one
In the 21st century, Presidential systems seem to be uniquely vulnerable to fascist politics. Not just Trump, but also Bolsonaro, Bukele, and the Chilean and now the Colombian examples as well. Parliamentary systems are of course not immune (cf Meloni and Orban) but they seem to be more resilient. At the same time, eg. in Turkey, the move towards authoritarianism seems to also be coupled with a move towards more and more presidential models. It seems fascists love the kinds of institutional shortcuts that strong executives can take.
People are plain stupid all over the world
This is the truth. They almost always vote by their current emotional state, too.
Well, Colombia’s fucked.
Shit and they were doing so good lately
Not really, Petro did an awful job. Some violenta crimes were going throught the charts (e.g., kidnappings increased by 290% since 2022). The health sector was also hit very bad.
I think it’s is precisely Petro’s blunders and Cepeda’s lack of criticism a main reason of why we’ll have this Aspriella clown as a president.
“millionaire” Now I think that means bought the election.
Surely nothing wrong with having rich people make politics … surely they will rather improve life for the normal people rather than their rich friends.
I don’t really know anything about this situation. Should I just assume that the CIA is CIAing?
Colombian here, people actually do support this Bukele/Trump/Milei wannabe.
Half of us are morons.
Why? People can’t be morons without psyops?
Lots of psyops besides the ones the CIA does.
You’re putting too much faith in an intelligence agency with most embarrassing history (and I must specify that whole of it is embarrassing) under most embarrassing (up to date) management of United States.
columbia has always had a far right situation for decades, likely influenced by the CIA in the past.
