Antanas Mockus Quits Colombia's Green Party

Former Colombian presidential candidate Antanas Mockus resigned from the Green Party last week, after Bogota mayoral candidate Enrique Peñalosa accepted a controversial campaign endorsement from ex-president Alvaro Uribe.

According to Colombia Reports, Uribe's support for Peñalosa has split the Green Party since it was first announced in early March, with Mockus being the most vocal about calling for Peñalosa to decline the endorsement. Speaking to El Espectador last Thursday, Mockus cited Uribe’s false positive and false demobilization scandals as evidence that his presidency came "at the expense of limits established in the constitution.”

In general it seems the jury is still out on whether Peñalosa’s decision to accept the endorsement will actually work to his advantage in October’s elections. According to a recent Gallup Colombia poll, Peñalosa is the favored candidate of the Bogota race in every situation, except when he is matched up against a hypothetical Uribe campaign, where he would lose by more than twice the votes. For this reason, it is not hard to see how the Peñalosa campaign could view Uribe’s endorsement as politically desirable.

Despite Uribe’s popularity, Mockus himself was seen as a kind of “anti-politician” who served as a symbol for alternative, more transparent governance. So while he may have gained the more traditional voters, the loss of Mockus’s supporters (who represent the Green Party’s base) could mean that Peñalosa ended up with only a minimal net increase of votes.

For his part, Peñalosa has defended his decision not to turn down Uribe’s support, saying that "the Greens have to be surrounded by many and achieve social consensus in order to make the country we want." Ultimately, the big question for the Bogota race is whether this bid to make the party more inclusive has backfired, instead casting Peñalosa as a careerist who has abandoned his party’s traditionally unorthodox approach to politicking.

Semana has two good pieces on this development. The first is a collection of various expert analyses on what Mockus’s departure means for his party’s future, as well as for the future of political dialogue in Colombia. Secondly, the Colombian magazine has a breakdown of the three main routes ahead of Mockus: launching his own campaign, allying himself with a different political movement, or devoting himself to changing the country’s political culture. Whatever his future holds, it looks as though it will still be in politics.

News Briefs

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