Colombia Could Use a Boring Centrist President
Election front-runner Ivan Duque could learn a lot from his neighbor, Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno.
A long road ahead.
Photographer: Luis Robayo/AFP/Getty Images
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos likely won’t be missed. His approval ratings have tumbled to 13 percent, down from 82 percent in 2010. His biggest accomplishment, the 2016 peace accord, which ended the Western Hemisphere’s longest shooting war and bagged him the Nobel Peace Prize, has left the country bitterly divided.
And so much for the incumbent’s golden touch: Santos’s former vice president, German Vargas Lleras, is running an underwhelming fourth place in the presidential race, and his former chief peace negotiator is polling dead last among major contenders. Instead, the candidate to beat is Ivan Duque, a young right-winger whose godfather is former President Alvaro Uribe, Santos’s sworn enemy.