Case notes
Alternative Democracy M-19
The party came out of a peace process between the government of Colombia and the left-wing guerrilla M-19 that ended in March of 1990. The guerrilla transformed itself into a party called “Alternative Democracy M-19”. It supported the vote for a Constitutional Assembly that took place during the legislative elections that same month and then ran for president in the presidential elections in May of the same year. The presidential candidate was Carlos Pizarro, the historic leader of M-19, however, he was assassinated in April of 1990 and had to be quickly substituted by Antonio Navarro Wolf, his second in command. Navarro came in third with 12.48% in the presidential elections, which were won by Liberal Party candidate César Gaviria. However, Alternative Democracy M-19 was the second most-voted party in the Constitutional Assembly elections that took place in December of 1990. The new Constitution was passed in July 1991 and new legislative elections took place in October of 1991, where the party came in third with 10.28% of the vote.
The main ideology of the party was Marxist (Boudon, 2001: 75) but the party aimed at reaching a larger section of the electorate by presenting themselves as “the new political alternative” and “more than a party” (Villamizar, 1995: 571). The central issue for the party, however, was not communism, but democracy (Boudon, 2001: 76). Carlos Pizarro, leader of the M-19 until his assassination, employed populist tropes when he argued that “what we need to do is create something that attracts the nonconformists within the traditional parties, the nonconformists within the private enterprise, the nonconformists within the guerrilla ranks, the nonconformists within society in general… and which it is capable of offering proposals to the nation” (quoted in Beccassino, 1989: 110). The M-19 also heavily criticized Liberal President Gaviria’s neoliberal reforms and the hardline it took with the existing active guerrilla groups (Boudon, 2001: 81).
Their platform was based on 8 points: “(1) peace and an end to violence, (2) rejection of corruption and clientelism, (3) constitutional development toward a”social state of law”, (4) an economic policy based on production and an expanding socioeconomic base, (5) a specific employment program, (6) a pact to protect the environment, (7) priority for social programs, and (8) Latin American regional integration” (El Nuevo Siglo, 1993). Moreover, the party emphasized the need to end military impunity (Boudon, 2001: 89).
The party was a direct heir of the M-19 movement, a movement that very explicitly articulated a strong criticism of the “oligarchy” (Caro Pulido 2020, 104). In their first press release, the M-19 argued that:
“the Spanish chains broken by Bolivar, today are replaced by the gringo dollar. And it is that in the seat of Bolivar, every four years the representatives of the murderous oligarchies of the Colombian people have taken turns. And the fact is that these exploiters speak of a sovereign homeland while they hand it over to the foreign master. They speak of a just homeland while the wealth of a privileged few is amassed in the anguish of the workers. […] But Bolivar is not with them -the oppressors- but with the oppressed. (Caro Pulido 2020, 106).
This rhetoric was constant throughout the existence of the guerrilla. In a press release in 1985 they argued, for instance, that:
"Another intention, anti-popular and immoral, is that of the rulers and editorialists of the oligarchy, who seek impunity in a supposed defense-abstract, intangible- of the rule of law: To act as if the nation were themselves, themselves alone; to mount without impediment their big business deals, their great speculations; and to load on the back of the people, giving them the character of national, their loans with the international banks, obliging the citizen to pay these debts which are, in general, the result of embezzlement or illicit" (M-19, November 6, 1985, CEDEMA).” (quoted in Caro Pulido (2020, 106).
We have not found any evidence that indicates a criticism of immigrants or ethnic others as threats. Therefore, we have coded FL for ideology, 3 for OTH_POLCLASS, OTH_FINANCIAL, OTH_MILITARY, and OTH_FOREIGN, and 1 for every other category.
Judging the violation of liberal-democratic norms of Alternative Democracy M-19 is very complicated because the party only existed for two months before the elections and was a direct heir of a guerrilla group. Under the leadership of both Carlos Pizarro and Antonio Navarro the M-19 had kidnapped Conservative candidate Antonio Gómez Hurtado in 1988 as a way to pressure the government of Colombia to sign the peace process and while Pizarro was second in command in 1985, the M-19 assaulted the Justice Palace of Bogotá in an incident that ended with the burning of the building and the death of 101 people. Of course, the party stressed the benefits of the peace accord and we have found no violation of liberal-democratic norms in the two-months run up to the election but these violations were very common in the recent past and committed by the party leaders. Thus, we have coded LIBDEMS as 2 in order to reflect this contradictory evidence.
Neither Carlos Pizarro nor Antonio Navarro had held any governmental position before the May 1990 presidential elections. However, between the 7th of August and the 27th of October, Antonio Navarro became Minister of Healthcare of Colombia invited by President Gaviria. He then left his position to compete in the December 1990 Constitutional Assembly elections and was one of the three presidents of the commission that drafted the new constitution. Camilo González Posso, another member of Alternative Democracy M-19 substituted Navarro as Minister of Healthcare. Thus, when the new legislative elections took place in October 1991, the party still controlled the Ministry of Healthcare (INSIDER, INC_PARL = 2).
Álvaro Uribe
Colombia has traditionally been conceived as an unfertile country for the emergence of populist forces (Dugas, 2003; Giraldo, 2018). Although Jorge Eliécer Gaitán and Gustavo Rojas Pinilla are considered examples of populism there is much debate on whether Álvaro Uribe Vélez, the most influential politician of the twenty first century in Colombia, can be classified as a populist or not. Uribe did not emphasize the opposition with the financial elites, was not particularly charismatic and explicitly rejected populism (Dugas, 2002: 1126). However, he did have a strong stance against political elites. Uribe had been a member of the Liberal Party but ran as an independent in the 2002 election under a platform called “Colombia First”. He strongly criticized the political system at the time, saying in his 100 points manifesto (2002: point 4) that “I dream with a state that serves the people and not corruption and politicking” (“politiquería”). This last term is a derogatory way to refer to politics and it is very present in Uribe’s campaign, so much that one of his promises was to announce a “Referendum against Corruption and Politicking” as his very first action in government (Uribe, 2002: point 9). In that same manifesto, he also criticized pluralism by stating that “pluralism had been transformed into dispersion and anarchy due to the salaries, the clientelism and the pension privileges” (Uribe, 2002: point 22). Abad Cisneros also finds strong presence of a manichean distinction between the people and an elite “who is communist and betrays the people in service of the FARC” (Abad Cisneros 2015, 165-66) (OTH_POLCLASS = 3).
Uribe was particularly known for his hard stance on security issues. The first of his three-pillar-policy was “democratic security” which involved hardline policies regarding left-wing guerrillas such as the FARC. He made constant references to the fatherland and aimed to achieve national unity in the fight against the guerrillas. Uribe clearly delimitated an “us” vs “them” based on support to his security policies. He divided society between “the patriots that support the policy of Democratic Security and the Communists in disguise that wish to sell the fatherland to the FARC” (Fierro, 2012: 130). He conceded no legitimacy to the guerrillas and attacked those who did as traitors. The only legitimate policy was to defeat the armed groups in order to achieve a country “without guerrillas, without paramilitaries… without drugs” (Uribe 2002: points 26 and 31). Some of the policies involved “praising the profession of soldier and policemen” (Uribe 2002: point 28) as well as paying regular citizens that had undertaken anti-terrorist actions (Uribe 2002: point 39).
His manifesto clearly states the protection of minority rights and immigration is not a relevant element in his platform. As a former governor of one of Colombia’s regions and mayor to one of its most important cities, Uribe was included in previous political settlements but was a peripheral figure in them. Although he created the new party and undertook a very personalistic style, the decay of the previous political system was evident and anti-corruption was a common platform among several parties in the 2002 election (Duges, 2003: 1126). Uribe declared a state-of-siege shortly after becoming president which was condemned by human rights organizations (El País, 2002), has attacked the press (Fierro, 2014: 139) and has been repeatedly accused of collaboration with far-right paramilitary groups (El País, 2006).
However, the state-of-siege measure is quite common in Colombian history and he accepted the Constitutional Court’s decisions when they did not rule in his favor (Dugas, 2003: 1133). Therefore, I have classified him as 1 on OTH_IMMIGRANTS and OTH_ETHNIC and as 2 on CHARISMA and INSIDER and LIBDEMNORMS .
On economic issues, Uribe defended orthodox and neoliberal policies because one of his main “three pillars”, “investment trust” was to make Colombia a secure and attractive place for foreign investment (Uribe, 2002) (OTH_ECONOMIC and OTH_FOREIGN = 1, LRPOSITION = R).
Álvaro Uribe ended his presidency with one of the highest approval rates in Colombian history and his personality has profoundly marked politics after him. When he failed to pass a law that could allow him to run for a third time, Juan Manuel Santos was regarded as his successor. Santos had been Uribe’s Defense Minister and, although he ran a campaign that was also tough on the FARC, his profile was that of a rich technocrat that ran on a platform of continuity with Uribe’s politics. He argued that he was the opposite to populism and shortly after his victory he changed his discourse regarding the guerrillas. He initiated the “peace dialogues” with the FARC and that made Uribe distance from him. The most important expression of this conflict was the 2016 referendum on the Peace Agreement.
Santos’ main rival in 2014 and its successor in the presidency in 2018 have both been successors of Uribe under the umbrella of the Democratic Centre (CD), the party that Uribe founded in 2013 to confront Santos. The CD is a party regarded my many as right-wing although they explicitly situate themselves in the center. Uribe’s ideas have remained fairly constant throughout the past 20 years and the CD shares his programmatic points view, merely adding two more to Uribe’s three pillars (CD website). We have coded this party in the same manner as the rest of Uribe’s government in all legislative elections as it has also been identified as a populist party that follows Uribe’s ideas (León, Agualimpia, y Barrios 2018, 164).
However, the inclusion of the two presidential candidates of the Uribismo as populist is less clear. They both owe their popularity to being related to Uribe, they did not try to distance themselves from him and their discourses are less anti-elitists, more plural and more moderate than that of the leader of the CD. These politicians agree with Uribe on the substantive elements of his discourse but employ to a much lesser degree his populist strategies. Francisco Panizza (in private conversation) argued against including them in any populism dataset and Jorge Giraldo uses the label populist just to refer to the figure of Álvaro Uribe (Giraldo, 2019). We, too, agree that neither Óscar Zuluaga nor Iván Duque should be included.
Gustavo Petro
Petro was part of the M-19 guerrilla movement and later in the Alternative Democracy M-19. In 2005 this party unified with other movements and created the “Pole of Democratic Alternative” (“Polo Democrático Alternativo”) and he became a prominent member. With these two parties Petro had been MP and Senator and ran as the presidential candidate in 2010. He had not held any position in government previously (INSIDER = 1, CHARISMA = 1 in 2010). He did not achieve the presidency in 2010 and left the party shortly after. He then founded his own party, “Movimiento Progesista” and became mayor of Bogotá. He then ran for president of Colombia in 2018 under the platform “Humane Colombia” (“Colombia Humana”) and then again in 2022, this time winning the election. Gustavo Petro created the new party and the presidential coalition and ran on a populist platform based on his personal figure. His new party and platform would not have existed without him (CHARISMA = 3 in 2018).
Petro’s discourse has been clearly identified as left-populist (González Figueroa 2018; Grisales 2022; Kajsiu y Grisales 2019). A crucial point of his discourse is the defence of the "the poor", "the workers", "the peasants", "the indigenous people" and "the Afros" (González Figueroa 2018, 53) and a criticism of elites as estranged from the rest of the people "They only know the land from the golf course, they only know the poor from the maid who every day brings them hot breakfast in bed, they have had a life of privilege and power, they do not have the experience, they do not have the capacity, they have never felt what poverty means, the resistance, the sacrifice" (González Figueroa 2018, 54). In a TV advertisement in 2018, Petro clearly outlined his populist discourse: “The first time that a presidential candidate that does not represent the”politiquería”, not the power of the elites, nor the corrupts who have sacked the country and are now surrounding Duque, may win the elections” and “it is the first time that a government may be formed that really works for the people” (Petro, 2018a). Corruption was the main topic of his discourse and he relates all of Colombia’s problems to it. For example, he stated that “the problem with the healthcare system is not that we need more money, but corruption” (Petro, 2018b) (OTH_POLCLASS = 3). He also diluted its ideological position when he defends that “I was leftist and I do not regret it but my proposal is not socialist, that did not work, we propose the development of a democratic capitalism based on granting access to a rural middle class to productive lands” (Petro, 2018b). However, Petro was very critical of the huge inequalities of the country and aimed to distribute wealth extensively. We have therefore coded Petro with L for LRPOSITION and 2 for OTH_FINANCIAL.
Petro’s opinion on the army was dominated by a comment he made in the campaign in which he said that “those youngsters that cannot study in university may end […] in the drug cartels or trying to find a job in the police or the army” (Petro, 2018c). Petro (2018d) rejected the notion that he hated the military and defended himself by saying that he gave shelter to the army while mayor of Bogotá. We have followed Petro’s self-description and labelled him as 1 in OTH_MILITARY.
We have found no significant violation of liberal democratic norms nor against ethnic others of immigrants (LIBDEMNORMS, OTH_ETHNIC, OTH_IMMIGRANTS = 1). In the campaign, Petro criticized that the Colombian foreign policy was subordinated to that of the US due to the money this country provides to Colombia to fight drug cartels (Petro, 2018e). He also argued for Colombia to occupy a more prominent and less subordinate role in international politics. During the crisis in Venezuela, Petro called for rallies against any military intervention in Venezuela by the US (Petro, 2019). Although Petro is clearly critic of foreign power interests, these are not constructed as the main threat to the country, so we have labelled him 2 on OTH_FOREIGN.
References
Beccassino, A. (1989) “M-19: El heavy metal latino americano”, Bogotá: Fondo Editorial Santodomingo.
Boudon, L. (2001) “Colombia’s M-19 Democratic Alliance: A Case Study in New-Party Self-Destruction”, Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 116, 28, pp. 73-92.
Centro Democrático (website) ‘Quiénes somos’: https://www.centrodemocratico.com/?page_id=868
Dugas, J. (2003) “The emergence of Neopopulism in Colombia? The case of Álvaro Uribe”, Third World Quarterly 24(6):1117-1136.
Duque (2018) . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGlVeETH9M8
Duque, I. (2018) Inaugural Speech, 7 August: https://muse-jhu-edu.gate3.library.lse.ac.uk/article/705728
El Nuevo Siglo (1993) “Article on M-19”, 8 March.
El País (2002) “Uribe decreta el estado de excepción en Colombia para frenar a las FARC”, 12 August: https://elpais.com/diario/2002/08/13/internacional/1029189602_850215.html
El País (2006) “Todo por la autoridad”, 26 May: https://elpais.com/diario/2006/05/28/internacional/1148767216_850215.html
Fierro, M. (2014) “Álvaro uribe vélez populismo y neopopulismo”, Análisis Político, Vol. 27(81), pp. 127-147.
Giraldo, J. (2018) “Populistas a la colombiana”, Debate.
Giraldo, J. (2019) “El uribismo: un populismo peligroso” 18 March: https://www.razonpublica.com/index.php/politica-y-gobierno-temas-27/11843-el-uribismo-un-populismo-peligroso.html
Petro, G. (2018a) “TV advertisement”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vd2TzvHCJM
Petro, G. (2018b) “Mi propuesta no es socialista, es al contrario, es el desarollo del capitalism” 29 May: http://www.wradio.com.co/noticias/actualidad/mi-propuesta-no-es-socialista-es-al-contrario-es-el-desarrollo-del-capitalismo-petro/20180529/nota/3755512.aspx#
Petro, G. (2018c) “Jóvenes terminan de soldados”, 19 April: https://www.pulzo.com/elecciones-2018/respuesta-policias-militares-gustavo-petro-PP472698
Petro, G. (2018d) “Twitter”, 21 April: https://twitter.com/petrogustavo/status/987822827272359938?lang=es
Petro, G. (2018e) “Petro dice que la política internacional de Colombia es un apéndice de los EEUU” 1 May: https://www.eldiario.es/politica/Gustavo-Petro-internacional-Colombia-EEUU_0_766773753.html
Petro, G. (2019) “Petro invita a marchar contra una "intervención militarista" de EE. UU. en Venezuela”, 30 January: https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/politica/petro-invita-marchar-contra-una-intervencion-militarista-de-ee-uu-en-venezuela-articulo-836896
Tomaselli, W. (2018) Ivan Duque is Colombia's Youngest President-Elect Ever. Now He Has to Fix the Divided Country, Time.com: http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=53c67f1e-ec02-462b-a3fc-3931a72a4cf5%40sessionmgr4006&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=130819446&db=bth
Uribe, Á. (2002) “Manifiesto Democrático – 100 puntos de Álvaro Uribe Vélez”: https://www.mineducacion.gov.co/1621/articles-85269_archivo_pdf.pdf
Villamizar, D. (1995) “Aquel 19 será”, Santa Fe de Bogotá: Planeta Colombiana Editorial.
Zuluaga, O (2014b) “Óscar Zuluaga anuncia suspención de los diálogos con las FARC si gana la Presidencia en Colombia” 26 May: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGyMGIspHMA
Zuluaga, O. (2014a) “Zuluaga es Centro Democrático”, 10 March: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsJirgvH6hg
Abad Cisneros, Angélica. 2015. «Estrategia política y comportamiento electoral. El voto a candidatos populistas en la región andina». Doctoral Thesis. Universidad de Salamanca. http://hdl.handle.net/10366/128138 (26 de septiembre de 2023).
Caro Pulido, Jessica Lizeth. 2020. «Estrategias populistas en el discurso del M-19 en los medios gráficos a lo largo de su accionar guerrillero (1974-1990)». Tesis. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/107683 (26 de septiembre de 2023).
González Figueroa, Mateo. 2018. «La construcción discursiva de la hegemonía : análisis del discurso de Gustavo Petro durante el periodo 2010-2018». instname:Universidad de los Andes. https://repositorio.uniandes.edu.co/handle/1992/38902 (26 de septiembre de 2023).
Grisales, Yenifer Tamayo. 2022. «¿Una apuesta por el populismo? Movilización ideológica en las elecciones presidenciales de 2022: Gustavo Petro y Rodolfo Hernández». Revista Debates (88): 62-73.
Kajsiu, Blendi, y Yenifer Tamayo Grisales. 2019. «Neoconservadurismo versus populismo socialdemócrata. Una comparación de los discursos anticorrupción de Iván Duque y Gustavo Petro en la segunda vuelta presidencial de 2018». Estudios Políticos (56): 123-47.
León, Marcela Viviana, Helmer David Agualimpia, y Muriel Carolina Barrios. 2018. «Populismo latinoamericano, elitismo político y legado familiar en Colombia». Amauta 16(31): 157-73.