HE WAS the unlikeliest of presidential hopefuls, a former maths lecturer who once mooned his students to get their attention and wore a superhero cape to teach civic values.
And a few weeks ago, Antanas Mockus seemed destined to be a brief footnote in Colombian electoral history, with opinion polls giving the Green Party candidate 1 per cent of the vote in elections to replace Alvaro Uribe.
But ahead of Sunday’s first round Dr Mockus has surged into contention in a turnaround that has electrified the campaign. A Gallup poll gives him 35 per cent against 37 per cent for Juan Manuel Santos, Mr Uribe’s defence minister, who began as favourite thanks to his role as the strategist behind Mr Uribe’s popular crackdown against Farc.
Dr Mockus, who served twice as mayor of Bogotá, has tapped into a yearning for a new type of politics in a South American country riven by half a century of civil conflict. He has styled himself an outsider who will tackle corruption and poverty. “We are not going to destroy what Uribe built,” he said. “But it is not enough with just police and soldiers; what is needed is justice and social attention.”
The candidate has emphasised that he is no dove and will maintain the previous administration’s hardline push against Farc rebels.
Speeding through the Caribbean coastal city of Santa Marta in a bulletproof 4x4, Dr Mockus explains his own dramatic rise: “Colombians see in me someone who’s good.” In his campaign appearances he mixes a professorial monotone with occasional bouts of playfulness. His followers have also taken the initiative. “Mockusians” design and print out posters and street vendors make unofficial campaign T-shirts with his slogans. Young voters organise flashmobs where they freeze in a certain position in a public area until enough passersby express interest, then reveal their green Mockus T-shirts and begin chanting his slogans.
His success has much to do with the fact that he is neither with nor against Mr Uribe. He says his government would not accept the “anything goes” attitude in achieving gains against leftist rebels and drug traffickers, in a reference to spying and human rights scandals that have besieged the Uribe government. And he has said negotiations with Farc would happen only if they accept the Colombian constitution. That puts fans of Mr Uribe at ease, while Dr Mockus’s ethics and honesty appeal to the opposition.
With violence on the wane, Colombia has become a magnet for foreign investors, but the rewards are uneven: a 43 per cent poverty rate condemns many slums and rural areas to deprivation. Some 3.3 million people have been displaced by the violence.
Dr Mockus’s message appealed to a nation grateful that Farc guerrillas no longer threaten cities but fed up with scandals, polarisation and political infighting.
He has promised smoother relations with Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, whose regular spats with the Uribe administration paralysed cross-border trade. He would rebuff Mr Chavez’s socialist model, he said, not by confrontation but by making Colombia a “better place” than Venezuela. Having run a clean and efficient administration in the capital, he offers a contrast to perceived ruling-class cronyism. Admitting he has Parkinson’s disease bolstered the honest image.
In the face of such a challenge, Mr Santos’s reputation as an effective defence minister appears overshadowed by his links to an elite ruling class and scandals involving security forces, including the abduction and murder of as many as 1,000 slum-dwellers and peasants falsely portrayed as guerrillas. Polls suggest Dr Mockus could win an outright victory on May 30th, but a run-off against Mr Santos in June is more likely. – (Guardian service)