Opinion | Petro and Colombia’s Rule of Regulation

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

Nonetheless, Colombians will probably be fortunate if counterproductive financial concepts are Mr. Petro’s worst contribution to public coverage. A higher—and legit—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 legislation. Particular 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 Nineteen 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 Might 2018, he instructed his supporters to take their politics to the streets. That very same 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. Throughout 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 pleasure” and “a Bolivarian hug” for Colombia. On the finish of his tweet he added the normal Cuban revolutionary battle cry: “Venceremos.”

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

Colombia is nominally a democracy. However there’s no legislation 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 working for president. However years after that felony conviction, for which he served 18 months, his attorneys managed to have a courtroom reclassify it as a misdemeanor.

When Mr. Santos (2010-18) needed to carry 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 subsequently pardonable.

The Santos authorities, with backing from Mr. Obama, put the FARC on the identical ethical aircraft because the Colombian navy on the negotiating desk in Havana. Within 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 need of the individuals.

The deal established a particular “peace” courtroom, ostensibly charged with uncovering the reality about 5 many years of FARC-spawned violence. However Staff 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 developing his dictatorship. Bolivia’s

Evo Morales

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

Write to O’Grady@wsj.com.