Colombia heads to runoff election between populist candidates, mix policies for agricultural sector
Coffee Network (Bogota) - Colombia will hold a second round of presidential elections with two anti-establishment candidates competing in a runoff on June 19 amid mixed proposals for the agricultural sector.
Leftist former Bogota mayor Petro had 40.3pc of votes, with 99.9pc of ballot boxes counted on May 29 first round of elections, compared with 28.2pc of the former Bucaramanga mayor Rodolfo Hernandez.
Hernandez, known for managing well the finances of the mid-sized city of Bucaramanga, beat the center-right candidate Federico Gutierrez, as Hernandez centered his campaign on anti-corruption, with “don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t betray” as his motto.
Hernandez could prove to be a threat to Petro in the second round, and could well become the next president of Colombia, given the fact that as the 5.04 million mn votes secured by Gutierrez will now be transferred to Hernandez in a bid to prevent leftist candidate Petro win the presidency, according to political analyst Daniela Garzon said. Gutierrez has announced his support for Hernandez.
“I think there is a lot of fear within the Historic Pact [(Party of Petro’s party]) that Rodolfo
Hernandez will win the presidency. Today if we added the 23pc that Gutierrez secured,
clearly Rodoflo Hernandez would be the president,“ Garzon political analyst for NGO Fundacion Paz y Reconciliacion.
Paola Mantilla, political analyst at the Externado University, said that not necessarily all the votes of Gutierrez’ votes will necessarily move to Hernandez. Mantilla expects a highly tightly contested second round in June.
“Gustavo Petro is not convenient for Colombia, we believe that this option would be a danger for the country,” Gutierrez said after announcing his support for Hernandez.
Hernandez’s 5.95mn votes when coupled with the in addition to the 5.04mn votes of for
Gutierrez, would likely give the former him far more votes than the 8.52 mn votes obtained
by Petro during the first round.
Agricultural Proposals
As for his economic policies, Hernandez’s proposals are more of a mixed bag. He is a businessman, and his instincts seem to be to provide space for the private sector, though some of his ideas suggest he could lean towards protectionism and (Latin American) industrial policy, favoring trade protection for the agricultural sector, JP Morgan recently said.
The 77-year old businessman Hernandez calls to revise some free trade agreements so that it will not allow the import of products when there is sufficient supply in local production.
“A country of agricultural vocation like Colombia must return to the fields and work to give peasants the tools necessary to be competitive. Free trade treaties have put the peasant producer to compete with all agribusiness of developed countries that inject subsidies ... not allowing producers to compete,” Hernandez’s manifesto says.
In his government, his administration will establish a vocational approach to each territory, and we will work jointly with municipal administrations to do so.
He calls to develop an investment policy in the field, according to the national agrological plane issued by the Agustín Codazzi Geographic Institute in which it will grant credits to farmers that adopt the recommendations of the Agustin Codazzi Institute. He will establish an agricultural and rural state policy that responds to international market variables. He calls to industrialization of the fields with engineering programs for production that use technology from tip, replicating successful models in the world like Japanese and Israeli.
He will promote an agricultural law that prioritizes the use of supplies of national origin, particularly fertilizers. He will implement associative or agro -business models among large, small and medium producers aiming at the transformation of agricultural products including medicinal cannabis, poppy and coca derivatives. “This will have a collateral effect a
contribution to the eradication of illegal crops, affecting
in the reduction of violence by affecting the financing of groups outside the law,” he says
Former guerilla candidate Gustavo Petro aims to slap high taxes on unproductive land. He also seeks to review Free Trade Agreements that hurt local agricultural production.
JP Morgan said in a research note the proposal of raising taxes on landowners seeks to force the brake-up of large agricultural estates into smaller parcels.” This is a longstanding feature of Petro’s agenda, including in his 2018 failed bid. The discussion is framed under the lenses of an agrarian reform and seeks to bolster land ownership by small and local cooperatives,” JP Morgan said.
His proposals also call to update of the national land registry using geo-location tagging and a multipurpose land survey mechanism.
Petro has been consistently indicated that his plans would not amount to expropriation, and his advisors have even suggested that his land reform would allow the market to more efficiently “right size” landholdings to be more productive. However, critics point out the likely lack of buyers for highly taxed land, and the likely role of the state in acquiring and re-appropriating land, JP Morgan added.
Petro also calls to strengthen local companies that produce fertilizers to avoid the dependence on importer fertilizers. “In the short term we will load the productive recovery of Monomeros and Ferticol and the development of a national fertilizer industry,” reads his manifesto.
He calls to create a policy of intelligent tariffs to agrifood and agro -industrial assets, while stimulating national production. He says Colombia can and must produce corn as it has land suitable for corn crops and scrap imports on the agricultural product.
He plans to build collection centers and goods for transformation agroindustrial and the development of food chains of corn, rice, wheat, potato, avocado, banana, cassava, soy, sorghum, yame, tomato, coffee and cocoa. He aims to strengthen cooperatives.
He will foster the cannabis industry in the hands of the producers, articulating industry and knowledge, as well as the diversification of uses in medicine, textiles and food.
By Diana Delgado
