Staying the course

By placing the presidency almost within the grasp of Juan Manuel Santos, Colombian voters chose consolidation over idealism.

FOR a candidate facing a tight vote, Juan Manuel Santos seemed unusually calm on the eve of Colombia’s presidential election on May 30th. A former defence minister, Mr Santos is the preferred candidate of Álvaro Uribe, the popular outgoing president. Yet his seemingly lacklustre campaign had allowed a race that might have been easy to become a struggle. The last published opinion polls, taken a week or more before the vote, had him tied with Antanas Mockus, a former mayor of Bogotá whose talk of a new, clean politics captured the imagination of middle-class Colombians. The polls also suggested that, in a run-off between the two, Mr Mockus would win.

But the relaxed Mr Santos said his own polls told a different story—and they turned out to be right. He won a commanding 47% of the vote compared with just 22% for Mr Mockus, and is all but certain to become Colombia’s next president in the run-off on June 20th.

His thumping score underlines how Colombians want above all to consolidate the progress made under Mr Uribe. Before he took office in 2002, the country had endured over half the world’s kidnappings and its highest murder rate. Much of Colombia was ravaged by leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries. Mr Uribe’s security build-up reduced the guerrillas to an irritant and persuaded the paramilitaries to demobilise. Greater security brought foreign investment and economic growth.

Mr Mockus bet that precisely because of these gains, Colombians now have other concerns. He insisted on the importance of “democratic legality”, called life and public funds “sacred” and said that in pacifying the country there should be no “shortcuts”. That was a criticism of the many scandals that have marred Mr Uribe’s rule. Perhaps the worst of them was the revelation that in a grotesquely misguided attempt to be seen to be winning, the army had killed scores, and perhaps hundreds, of civilians and dressed them as dead guerrillas.

Mr Santos retorted that as defence minister he dealt with this crime by sacking more than two dozen senior officers and drawing up new rules of engagement for the army. And he countered Mr Mockus’s rise by stressing that his own experience went beyond security. He is also a former finance minister and said that his priority as president would be jobs.

Mr Mockus’s honest idealism strayed into political naivety. He said he would support the extradition of both Mr Uribe and Mr Santos to Ecuador if the courts there persisted with charges against them over the bombing of a FARC camp just across the border in 2008. (He later backtracked.) He said he “admired” Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s leftist president, who has imposed curbs on Colombian exports and threatened war. Mr Mockus then claimed he meant to say “respected”.

Such missteps reminded voters that Colombia’s renaissance could be reversed. Mr Uribe himself capitalised with a barrage of radio interviews calling for the continuation of his policies. Although he was legally barred from endorsing a candidate, this amounted to a thinly veiled campaign for Mr Santos, the candidate of his U Party. The day after the vote, Mr Santos met Mr Uribe in the presidential palace and credited him with the victory. In addition, as a former independent running for the small Green Party, Mr Mockus lacked a political machine to get out the vote.

It is hard to see how Mr Santos might lose the run-off. He has already received the backing of the Conservative Party, which is part of Mr Uribe’s congressional coalition and whose own candidate fared poorly. Another former uribista, Germán Vargas Lleras, who came third with 10% of the vote, has also backed Mr Santos. Parts of the opposition will do the same: many legislators from the Liberal party prefer Mr Santos, who like Mr Uribe is a former Liberal, to Mr Mockus.

Ever the purist, Mr Mockus says he will not engage in political horse-trading. During the campaign he alienated the wealthy by promising new taxes and pushed away the left by rejecting overtures from the Democratic Alternative Pole party, saying it had factions that were close to the FARC. He now has just three weeks to try to rekindle the spark of popular enthusiasm he briefly ignited at the start of the campaign.

For Mr Santos the presidency is tantalisingly close, but it is not yet won. Perhaps the biggest threat he faces in the run-off is a low turnout, in a country where voting is voluntary. Only 49% of the electorate voted on May 30th. But he has done most of the hard work of persuading Colombians to stay the course that Mr Uribe set.