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What We're Watching: Colombian presidential frontrunner, trouble in Corsica

March 14, 2022
Alex Kliment
What We're Watching: Colombian presidential frontrunner, trouble in Corsica
Petro reacts after winning the referendum vote for the Historic Pact coalition in Bogota.
REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez

Left-winger Petro is Colombia’s man to beat

Gustavo Petro ran the table in Sunday’s presidential primaries, drawing more votes from his Historic Pact Party’s voters alone than the winning candidates of the other two party primaries combined. In the May 29 first-round general vote Petro, a one-time guerrilla and former mayor of Bogotá, will face off against a bevy of at least five candidates, the strongest of whom include two former mayors of Medellín, the centrist Sergio Fajardo and right-winger Federico Gutierrez. But having surpassed 40 percent in recent polls, Petro could be on track to win outright in the first round. If he did, it would be a political earthquake in a country where decades of war with Marxist guerrillas had long kept national politics firmly on the center right. Petro has called for higher taxes on the wealthiest Colombians, ambitious land reform to help peasant farmers, and wants to shutter the country’s oil industry, which accounts for half of all export revenue. The country’s traditional political and business interests are naturally alarmed — so buckle up for what will be an exceedingly nasty campaign homestretch in South America’s third-largest economy and a major US ally.

Corsican nationalist violence

For more than a decade, Corsican independence militant Yvan Colonna has been in prison for the assassination of a top local French official. But after a fellow prisoner beat him into a coma earlier this month, things got spicy on the rugged, Mediterranean island, which has long chafed under French rule. Corsican nationalists said the attack was orchestrated by Paris, and several thousand took to the streets over the weekend, including a few hundred extremists who hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks at the police. Authorities pushed back with tear gas and water cannons. In total, close to 70 people were injured, about two-thirds of them police. The French interior minister called for calm and plans to visit the island on Wednesday.

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