Pizarro, Bolívar and Muhamad give up their presidential aspiration and give their support to Iván Cepeda

The electoral route of the Colombian left is finally cleared. Senator María José Pizarro, former senator Gustavo Bolívar and the former Minister of Susana Muhamad have gave up his presidential aspiration for the historical pact in the midst of the skein of resolutions of the National Electoral Council that have hindered the promised unity of the progressive forces. Instead, the three have delivered their support this Friday to Senator Iván Cepeda, so that it is he who obtains the candidacy of the coalition that supports the government of Gustavo Petro, and thus attaches the aspirations of the former mayor of Medellín Daniel Quintero. After several days of legal and political controversies, the consultation will be a race of three, which will only attend Cepeda, Quintero and the former health minister Carolina Cork.

Bolívar, who came from directing the Department of Social Prosperity until last May, was the first to make the announcement. “A few hours after the deadline for registering the candidacy for the October 26 consultation that the candidate of the historical pact to the presidentials of 2026 (…) I have decided not to register because I have to sign an agreement that I have to support whoever wins in case not the winner,” said the also librettist in a video in his social networks. “And there is a small possibility that the candidate Daniel Quintero win, and I am forced to work for a candidacy that I do not believe, with many inconsistencies, with many shadows,” Bolívar continued. “I have decided, with great joy, with much love, support Iván Cepeda, who is a man who does represent me,” he said.

Moments later, Pizarro, one of the most visible women in the official bench, announced their support for the candidacy of Cepeda. “I will be, as always, on the correct side of the history and of this political project that was born from the people and will continue to walk with dignity,” he said from New York, where he accompanies President Petro’s visit in the framework of the United Nations General Assembly. He also said that it is now proposed to lead the construction of the bench in the “largest and most diverse congress that progressivism has had in its history”, which suggests that the list of the Senate of the Republic can lead. “I will continue to battle before the CNE so that there are real guarantees of political participation for progressive (its movement) and for the unity of the historical pact,” he said.

Then it was the turn of Muhamad, who shone as Minister of Environment in an unstable wedding, to express her unrestricted support to Cepeda’s candidacy. “The social struggle, ethical change, the force of conviction in the people and the rights will make Iván Cepeda Castro a great president,” he wrote on his social networks.

The Political Committee of the Coalition had announced the eve that gave up making the popular consultation on October 26 due to the lack of legal certainties, but President Petro had ripped this Friday from New York. “The historical pact must go to popular consultation. It is the people who have the right to choose its candidates or candidates,” he wrote in X. The last minute agreement, a few hours before the end of the deadline to register the candidates this Friday, has ended up rescuing the fiancee consultation and, incidentally, raid the way to the aspiration of Cepeda as the greatest counterweight to Quintero.

The media former mayor of Medellín, very resisted in different sectors of progressivism and without a history of militancy, has become the name of discord. Bolívar had even pointed out that under any Circustancia he planned to support him, because he is charged with a case of corruption when he ruled the capital of Antioquia, between 2020 and 2023. “The issue is not personal. The problem is that in 2022 I campaigned by attacking Rodolfo Hernández because he was charged with corruption. How do I tell people today that the accused of the right are bad, but the accused of our right They are good?

Those tensions had been preceded by other legal pitfalls. The road map that had proposed the pact is to make a consultation at the polls on October 26 to choose both a presidential candidacy and its lists to the Senate. A kind of primaries. The winner of that first consultation (partisanist, in the Colombian electoral jargon) will be measured in March of the next year in another consultation (interparty), as part of the broader coalition that they call wide front from the left. In that last one, in a possible twist that Bolívar has not discarded, some of the applicants who have resigned, who do not have double militancy problems, and that receives the endorsement of some other game could participate. “If for a remote case Quintero wins, there they will see me facing him again in March,” he said.

The plans for October had encountered the resolutions of the CNE, which he half approved last week the fusion of the historical pact, a coalition of progressive forces of all kinds that wanted to reach the polls as a unified party. At the time he authorized the conditioned confluence of the democratic pole, the Communist Party and the Patriotic Union, left the Human Colombia, the party of the President and Bolívar and other candidates who got off his aspiration, such as progressives, the movement of Senator Pizarro. That decision had left the partisan consultation that has just relived this Friday.