Petro and Colombia's Rule of Law

The 62-year-old president-elect is a hard-left populist. He has promised to boost taxes on entrepreneurs, impose new import duties, develop entitlements, and finish allowing for oil exploration. In his view, the state, not the market, ought to run the economic system. Colombia’s central financial institution is meant to be impartial, however Mr. Petro is anticipated to stress it to print pesos recklessly, à la Argentina. Capital is fleeing the nation.

Still, Colombians shall be fortunate if counterproductive financial concepts are Mr. Petro’s worst contribution to public coverage. A higher—and bonafide—fear is that by selecting an govt with an unbounded urge for food for energy and hyperlinks to political factions that sympathize with felony teams, Colombians have signed their democracy’s dying sentence.

The nation already has a wobbly rule of regulation. Special credit score for this vulnerability goes to President Obama and Colombian President

Juan Manuel Santos,

who put the issue of Colombian impunity on steroids by underwriting amnesty for the terrorist group FARC in a so-called peace settlement in 2016. The particular, longstanding relationship between the U.S. and Colombia is now over.

Mr. Petro is feared by many Colombians as a result of he was a member of M-19—a guerrilla group funded by Pablo Escobar—within the Seventies and ’80s. He was an in depth adviser to

Hugo Chávez

within the early 2000s, because the Venezuelan strongman was consolidating energy. The authoritarian streak Mr. Petro displayed when he was mayor of Bogotá from 2012 to 2015 alarmed even his allies. When he misplaced his third run for presidency in May 2018, he informed his supporters to take their politics to the streets. That identical 12 months Venezuela’s

Diosdado Cabello,

first lieutenant to dictator

Nicolás Maduro,

mentioned that Mr. Petro had requested Caracas for marketing campaign financing.

Mr. Petro denied the allegation. During this marketing campaign—his fourth run for the presidency—he bristled when accused of getting antidemocratic intentions. Venezuela assisted him in his denials. In March Mr. Cabello declared him “an enemy of chavismo.”

On Sunday a slim majority of Colombian voters mentioned that both they imagine Mr. Petro doesn’t have chavista aspirations or they don’t care. Shortly after the outcomes have been in, nevertheless, Mr. Cabello tweeted his “immense joy” and “a Bolivarian hug” for Colombia. At the top of his tweet he added the normal Cuban revolutionary battle cry: “Venceremos.”

Mr. Hernández was a weak challenger. He promised to defeat corruption. But he was a neophyte in nationwide politics and suffered resulting from standard fatigue with the center-right, which repeatedly failed when in authorities to spice up competitiveness and spur quick development. His comparatively robust exhibiting is generally defined by Colombian dread of a Petro presidency.

Colombia is nominally a democracy. But there’s no regulation that may’t be circumvented, and drug traffickers up to now have infiltrated the courts. Mr. Petro—convicted by a navy courtroom of the felony cost of unlawful weapons possession in 1985—should have been constitutionally barred from operating for president. But years after that felony conviction, for which he served 18 months, his legal professionals managed to have a courtroom reclassify it as a misdemeanor.

When Mr. Santos (2010-18) needed to deliver FARC terrorists into Congress, he used his management of the legislature to declare their drug trafficking (however not that of others) a political crime, and due to this fact pardonable.

The Santos authorities, with backing from Mr. Obama, put the FARC on the identical ethical airplane because the Colombian navy on the negotiating desk in Havana. In the ultimate settlement, the guerrillas have been granted de facto amnesty for his or her many bloody transgressions. In 2016, when voters in a nationwide referendum rejected what amounted to a give up by the democracy, Mr. Santos went again on his promise to abide by the desire of the folks.

The deal established a particular “peace” courtroom, ostensibly charged with uncovering the reality about 5 many years of FARC-spawned violence. But Team Santos allowed the ideological left to seize maintain of that courtroom. Victims of insurgent terrorism, who suffered years of intercourse slavery and torture in captivity, and households who misplaced family members have been subjected to hearings deliberate and scripted by FARC sympathizers.

Chávez used excessive oil revenues to grease palms and pay his enforcers as he was setting up his dictatorship. Bolivia’s

Evo Morales

used cocaine earnings to do the identical. Should Mr. Petro attempt to copy the neighbors, Colombia’s establishments could also be robust sufficient to withstand both or each strategies of consolidating energy. But betting on that looks like a triumph of hope over expertise.

Write to O’Grady@wsj.com.