The biggest losers of Colombia’s first round presidential elections were the Conservatives and the Liberals, which are traditionally the nation’s most political parties.
At the latest count, Conservative Party candidate Noemi Sanin was in 5th place with 6.14% of the vote, followed by Liberal Party candidate Rafael Pardo in 6th place with 4.38%.
According to political analyst Vivian Morales, these parties and their candidates failed to connect with their traditional support base.
With 99.50% of the vote counted neither Sanin nor Pardo managed to win over a million votes, with the Conservative candidate winning 892,602 votes and the Liberal 635,913 votes. Now their parties must decide which candidate – Juan Manuel Santos or Antanas Mockus – they will support in the second round election scheduled for June 20.
Conservative Party representatives announced that they will seek the resignation of the party’s leader and support the proposed leadership of Andres Felipe Arias, alias “Uribito.”
The Liberal Party will meet Monday to decide the path it will take in regards to the second round election.
Santos’ Partido de la U, a coalition formed to support Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in Congress, is a relative new-comer on the political scene, and appears to have snatched many votes from the nation’s traditional parties.