The race for president in Colombia just got interesting. The latest poll from the Centro Nacional de Consultoría gives the Mockus-Fajardo ticket 22% of the vote, slightly ahead of Conservative Party candidate Noemí Sanín, who has 20%. Uribe successor Santos is, of course, all by himself in first place, with 37%, but he still lacks the 50%-plus-one he needs to win in the first round.
This means we might see a run off between Santos and Mockus.
Who is this Mockus character? He’s easily one of the most unlikely figures in the history of democracy. The son of Lithuanian immigrants and the proud wearer of a crazy-looking Amish-style beard, Antanas Mockus is a mathematician who served as rector of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia until 1993, when he mooned a crowd of unruly students.
After the incident, he got pushed out as rector, ran for mayor of Bogota, and won in a landslide. He then proceeded to implement all sorts of edgy theories for reforming and cleaning up the city. They actually – amazingly – worked. Bogota in the 90s was a scary, dangerous, messy place. Bogota today is pretty damn nice.
Of course, you can never give full credit to a single person for doing something so complicated as cleaning up a crime-ridden city, but the consensus seems to be that Mockus the mathematician, the academic, the theoretician, did wonders for Bogota during his two terms as mayor.
He’s never made it far on the national level, however. Country folk usually have different concerns that city folk, and it’s doubtful that mimes would do much to stop the illegal armed groups that terrorize the countryside.
This time he might get further than he did in his 1998 bid for president. An alliance between Mockus and another centrist candidate brought about the current state of affairs, giving Mockus a fighting chance to at least make it to the big show.
Even if he gets there he’ll probably get trounced, as basically 57% of the vote is currently going for the right. Still, a kid can dream.
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[...] latest polls that put Mockus in second place in Colombia’s race for the presidency also show a huge increase in the likely voter turnout. [...]