First round presidential elections winner Juan Manuel Santos said Monday that his second round election rival Antanas Mockus failed to win more votes in Sunday’s election because of his proposal to raise tax.
Mockus promises to raise taxes and be “hard” on the rich, while Santos has warned that this would spell the “death” of the middle class.
Santos said that he would have liked an outright win in the first round and confirmed that he will seek second round alliances with the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, Cambio Radical and Polo Democratico.
For his part, Mockus admitted in an interview with La F.M. that his campaign had made mistakes and said he and his team will work to analyze and develop his proposals for government.
Mockus said that he was interested in an alliance with former Liberal Party presidential candidate Rafael Pardo.
“One person with whom there would be no problem and with whom it would very easy to reach an agreement is Rafael Pardo. A person with those personal qualities and with notable parliamentary experience would be very positive,” Mockus said.
Mockus said he would not rule out an alliance with Gustavo Petro‘s Polo Democratico because the election results clearly indicated that the Greens must make an alliance in order to beat Santos in the second round election.
Santos won 46.56% of the vote in the first round election, while Mockus won less than half of the “Uribista’s” number of votes, with 21.49% of the Colombians who cast a vote selecting him.
The Green candidate added that the election results indicated the demise of Colombia’s traditional parties.
Because no candidate received the majority vote needed to win the first round election outright, the two most popular candidates, Santos and Mockus, will now face-off in a second round election scheduled for June 20.