this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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Politics aside, dude seems like a genuine scumbag.

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[–] Danitos@reddthat.com 17 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (2 children)

Colombian here, I can give some context, at least from my perspective.

Current president is Petro, a left wing president. Cepeda is the candidate from there same party. Abelardo is the far right candidato that won.

Petro has done an awful job. I'll add some examples in a comment. Cepeda seems better than Petro, but lacks criticism against him, so people add Petro's shortcommings into Cepeda's candidature.

On the other hand Abelardo got sold as an outsider to the classical politics, as he came out of nowhere, and 1 year ago nobody knew who he was. He's actually been an ally of Uribe (our most controversial president in recent history; far right as well) and the traditional right, just simply not as involved in politics. He also got his fortune by defending and being an ally of criminals (think an IRL Saul Goodman). He's beyond awful and like OP said, a genuine scumbag (e.g., in an interview, he laughed while remembering how he used kill cats with explosives).

Some people were gonna vote against Petro no matter what. Some people really ate the lies that Abelardo, a man that got his fortune by allying with criminals, will fight really hard against criminals. Some people think both candidates were awful, and had to choose the least awful of both of them. And that's how we got him as our next president.

[–] NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

"Some people think both candidates were awful, and had to choose the least awful of both of them. And that’s how we got him as our next president."

I've heard that song and dance before.

[–] Danitos@reddthat.com 9 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Examples of Petro's missmanagments:

For context, keep in mind Colombia is a rather poor country, that has been in an ongoing armed conflict spanning several decades.

See for example his "Total peace" program, in which he wanted to resolve conflicts with armed groups via dialogue rather than violence. While this sounds very good on paper, the reality is that the majority of said groups simply acted in bad faith, and used the program as an opportunity to grow bigger. Number of combatants in said groups grew like 50%; extorsions: up 25%; terrorism: up 90%; kidnappings: up 290% (!). And yet he and Cepeda insists on the program, instead of realizing you can't take that route with some groups that simply act in bad faith.

Both of them are also pushing for a "Constitution Asambly", a way in which we can create a complete new Constitution. Our current one is from 1991 and allows it to be constantly modified, but enforces some limitations of power to the president, which they want to remove (like the CNE, an election overviewer and also the National Bank independence from there current president's hands). He famously promised not to do that in both his 2018 and 2022 campaigns, but once he got elected, started pushing for it in 2024.

Health sector also got hit baddly (it was bad, but not this bad), corruption has been rampant (which, being fair, has always been the case) and the country got bankrupted. Petro genuinely also looks like he's constantly high in drugs, I'm not even kidding.

He's also constantly crying on Twitter about how the elections have been fraudulent, despite not showing evidence, or spreading missionformation proved to be false. All of these generate an uneasy feeling of his party keeping the power for other 4 years.