Power belongs to the people, and that's not reversible
Petro's government reduced poverty to historic lows and raised minimum wages significantly, but failed to deliver promised healthcare and education reforms, leaving systems deteriorated. The election centers on security strategy: Cepeda proposes continuing peace negotiations with armed groups, while right-wing candidates advocate military crackdowns and megaprisons.
- 41 million Colombians eligible to vote Sunday
- Poverty rate fell to 31.8% in 2024; 3.4 million fewer poor since 2021
- Coca cultivation at historic 252,000 hectares in 2023
- Petro intervened in 7 health insurance companies managing 20 million people
- Minimum wage increased 23.7% in 2026, benefiting 2.4 million workers
Colombia votes Sunday on competing visions after Petro's four-year leftist government delivered mixed results: reduced poverty but deteriorated health/security and fiscal crisis. Voters choose between continuity or a rightward shift amid violence and unfulfilled promises.
Colombia goes to the polls on Sunday with more than 41 million eligible voters facing a choice that feels less like a traditional left-right contest and more like a referendum on what the country has become after four years under Gustavo Petro, the first leftist president in the nation's history.
When Petro took office, he arrived with sweeping promises to remake the fundamentals of Colombian life—health, education, security, the economy. The results have been decidedly mixed. He succeeded in shifting the national conversation, introducing new priorities into the public debate, and in some measurable ways improving material conditions for the poorest Colombians. Yet he also failed to deliver on his core transformation agenda, and in several critical areas, his government's actions contradicted its own rhetoric with tangible costs to ordinary people.
The clearest example is healthcare. Petro intervened in seven major health insurance companies managing coverage for roughly 20 million Colombians, arguing they were mismanaged and draining public funds. Nueva EPS, the largest such entity, moved from mixed public-private ownership to majority state control. Since the government took over, patients report a system in freefall—appointments impossible to obtain, medicines and medical supplies routinely unavailable. A 68-year-old man sitting outside a clinic in one of Bogotá's wealthiest neighborhoods told reporters the system had never been worse. His wife was hospitalized, and doctors told him to prepare for her death as though it were inevitable. The constitutional court itself has acknowledged that public health spending remains insufficient to sustain the system.
Education presents a similar paradox. Petro expanded access to free higher education dramatically, but the numbers no longer add up. The next government will face an impossible choice: maintain accessibility or stabilize the finances. Meanwhile, the shift in spending toward universities came at the expense of primary and secondary education, and enrollment among 11- to 14-year-olds has fallen sharply in recent years.
On security, the stakes feel even higher. Colombia is experiencing its worst violence in two decades, and the election has crystallized around competing visions of how to respond. Petro's approach, continued by his chosen successor Iván Cepeda, centered on negotiation—the "Total Peace" plan that brought armed groups to the table with the promise of disarmament through dialogue. The theory was sound; the execution was catastrophic. Armed groups used the negotiating period to strengthen themselves, consolidate territorial control, and expand their illicit economies. Rather than disarming, they turned on each other, fighting for dominance over drug trafficking routes and coca-growing regions. Coca cultivation has reached a historic peak of 252,000 hectares—an area six times the size of Medellín—and that trend has not reversed.
The right-wing opposition, represented by candidates like Abelardo de la Espriella, proposes the opposite approach: ten megaprisons, military-led territorial recovery, aerial fumigation of 330,000 hectares of illegal crops, and a security force composed of military veterans and reservists. The choice between negotiation and force has become the central axis of Colombian politics, overshadowing traditional ideological divides.
Yet Petro's government also achieved things his critics cannot simply erase. The poverty rate fell to a historic low of 31.8 percent in 2024, representing roughly 3.4 million fewer poor Colombians than in 2021. In 2026, Petro decreed a 23.7 percent increase in the minimum wage, putting an extra 66 dollars monthly in the pockets of 2.4 million workers. These are real gains for real people. The problem is that Petro funded them through mounting public debt, unable to secure sustainable financing. The next president will inherit a fiscal crisis and must choose between maintaining these popular measures while the deficit and inflation worsen, or implementing austerity that will immediately hurt the same workers who benefited from wage increases.
A political analyst at Colombia's leading risk consultancy observed that Colombian politics has never truly swung between left and right so much as between two poles of the same debate: peace versus war, negotiation versus confrontation. That framing helps explain why the election feels less like a choice between competing ideologies and more like a choice between competing diagnoses of what went wrong. Both Cepeda and the right-wing candidates promise to restructure Colombian society; they simply disagree on whether the tool should be dialogue or force. What seems certain is that whoever wins will need to present themselves as something new, as an alternative to the establishment—because that is what Petro's symbolic legacy has made necessary. The message that power belongs to ordinary people, not elites, has taken root in Colombian politics, and no incoming government will be able to reverse it.
Notable Quotes
The health system is worse than ever. The government just removes people from above and puts its own people in. Before it was much better.— Guillermo Barrios, 68, patient outside a Bogotá clinic
This is a disastrous government on security, health, fiscal crisis, and infrastructure. But it leaves, for example, a historic minimum wage increase that reduces inequality.— Mauricio Velásquez, professor at Universidad de los Andes School of Government
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does it matter that Petro reduced poverty if the health system collapsed?
Because both things are true at the same time, and that's the actual problem. He gave people more money to spend but made it harder for them to get medical care. You can't separate the wins from the failures—they're connected to the same choices he made.
So the peace negotiations with armed groups—was the idea itself wrong, or just the execution?
The idea wasn't inherently wrong. The execution was. Armed groups used the negotiating period to get stronger, not weaker. They stopped fighting the government and started fighting each other over territory and drug money. That's not peace; that's a power vacuum.
What does the next president actually inherit?
A country where people have tasted the idea that power should belong to them, not elites. That's not reversible. But also a fiscal crisis, a security catastrophe, a health system in collapse, and coca cultivation at its highest point ever. Pick your poison.
Is there a middle ground between negotiation and megaprisons?
Theoretically, yes. Practically, the election isn't offering one. Both main camps are promising to restructure society from the ground up. The voter is choosing between two kinds of radical, not between radical and moderate.
What happens if the right wins and tries the hard-line approach?
They'll face the same problem Petro did: armed groups are entrenched, they control territory and money, and military force alone hasn't solved this in decades. But they'll try it anyway, because that's what their voters are asking for.
And if Cepeda wins?
He has to convince people that negotiation can work this time, when it visibly failed last time. That's a much harder sell.