… but Centro Democratico bounces back, while small parties lose out in March 8 voting.
Last Sunday’s elections brought mixed results to Colombia’s capital with the left-wing Pacto Historico party cementing its position as most popular party in the city even while its main opponent the Centro Democratico showed relatively bigger gains.
With 18 Bogotá seats up for grabs in the Chamber of Representatives, the Pacto Historico, backed by President Gustavo Petro, took a majority of eight, an increase of one seat from the previous period.
And by garnering 900,000 votes the incumbent party upped its count by more than 100,000 compared to 2022, when it was also the most popular party in the city.
But by some comparisons the right-wing Centro Democratico’s result was even more impressive, surging from two to four seats on March 8, totalling 700,000 votes, up from around 300,000 in 2022.
In Bogotá, as at national level, the losers were the smaller independent parties often citizen-led or based on niche issues. Also failing was the Nuevo Liberalismo party, founded by mayor Carlos Galán, which failed to pick up a single seat, a sign perhaps of citizen discontent with the capital’s current administration.
The demise of the small and independents reflected a national trend of voter gravitation towards the two bigger parties, Centro Democratico and Pacto Historico, whose top candidates – Paloma Valencia and Iván Cepeda – are likely contenders for the presidential slug-out in May.
The remaining Bogotá seats went to smaller traditional parties the Green Alliance (2), and the Liberal Party (1), with one seat awarded to the upstart Salvacion Nacional formed by firebrand right-wing presidential candidate Abelardo De La Espriella.
Political phenomenon
The stand-out result in the Bogotá caucus was Centro Democratico’s first-time congressional candidate Daniel Briceño who captured 262,000 votes for his seat in the chamber.
Not only did Briceño get the highest congressional vote across Colombia, he also out-voted the entire list of senators – which get elected nationally – with one of the historically highest ever recorded in Colombia for a camara or senado representative.
The 34-year-old lawyer was being hailed this week as a political phenomenon. Briceño is currently serving on Bogotá city council where he campaigns against corruption, cronyism and waste through a clever combination of social media and forensic takedowns of his political targets.
The influencer made his name by digging into big data on government databases that has allowed him to uncover contracts and documents embarrassing to the administration of Gustavo Petro.
Since then, he has gained both an online following and voter base by scrutinizing and exposing mismanagement at all government levels.
Defend every vote
Briceño’s jump to congress was mirrored on the political left in Bogotá by the rise of Laura Beltran, aka Lalis, and Daniel Monroy, who both won seats for Pacto Historico.
Despite their success at the urns on March 8, both Monroy and Beltran amplified claims of fraud in the days after the election.
Beltran, posting on X, issued a media alert begging for lawyers in the city to volunteer their time as scrutineers to check the recount after detecting “the winds of fraud”.
“We are defending each vote for the Pacto Historico. In Bogotá we have the chance to recover one more seat,” she said, suggesting the party could up its count to nine.
Monroy, for his part, made a widely echoed claim that “votes for Pacto Historico were disappearing” but so far without producing evidence.
These accusations came after preliminary declarations by European Union electoral observers – 145 were deployed to Colombia – that the voting process had been “transparent, accurate and well-organized”.
Voter turnout for Bogotá was 48 per cent, similar to the level of participation across the country, with the capital providing 15 per cent of the national vote. A higher turnout is expected for the May presidential elections.