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SEOUL — Iván Duque swept into Colombia’s presidency in 2018 as a younger, little-known technocrat driving a surging right-wing motion. He tapped public anger in opposition to a peace deal that he stated had handled the nation’s lethal insurgents too softly. And he warned that the proposals of his left-wing opponent might stifle regular development.
Three years and a world pandemic later, it’s Mr. Duque who’s presiding over excessive unemployment and an offended voters — and who’s on the defensive in regards to the steps he has taken to tame persistent violence by militants.
Mr. Duque contends his insurance policies have opened alternatives for the middle- and low-income courses, inspired entrepreneurship and paved the best way for Colombia to return to its prepandemic development. He additionally touted social insurance policies that would handle problems with police conduct and social inequality that led to violent clashes this yr, killing dozens.
“The three pillars of our general plan of presidency, which had been legality, entrepreneurship and equality, have been producing outcomes,” Mr. Duque stated final week in an interview in South Korea with The New York Occasions. “Clearly, they had been affected by the pandemic. However I believe we’ve demonstrated our resilient spirit.”
Mr. Duque’s legacy — and that of his patron, the firebrand former President Álvaro Uribe, who nonetheless dominates Colombian politics — is on the road. Colombian voters go to the polls in Could, when Gustavo Petro, a former presidential candidate, earlier mayor of Bogotá and a onetime guerrilla member, might develop into the nation’s furthest-left chief in its historical past at a time when leftists are once more claiming victories throughout South America.
Mr. Duque can’t run once more due to time period limits, and his occasion’s candidate hasn’t been decided. Nonetheless, his authorities faces a few of the lowest approval scores of his presidency. Colombia’s economic system, commerce and funding from overseas had been hit laborious by the coronavirus, which exacerbated long-running social tensions over stark wealth inequality and police conduct.
He has additionally come underneath elevated strain to tame Colombia’s armed insurgencies and hasten the success of the federal government’s peace cope with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, identified by the Spanish acronym FARC, regardless of his criticism of the phrases of the deal on the 2018 marketing campaign path.
In South Korea, Mr. Duque was looking for commerce and funding alternatives, similar to expansions by Korean producers and elevated gross sales of Colombian espresso, avocados and bananas. He even cited the filming of a South Korean film — Mr. Duque has lengthy championed artistic investments in areas like the humanities and analysis — in Bogotá.
The president is making an attempt “to get South Korean buyers enthusiastic about enjoying massive ball,” stated Sergio Guzmán, of the Bogotá-based consulting agency Colombia Danger Evaluation.
The problem for Mr. Duque, Mr. Guzmán added, is {that a} victory by Mr. Petro might undo what he and his predecessors had achieved.
“He’s a weak president,” stated Mr. Guzmán. “He’s a lame-duck president. He’s a president whose most necessary legacy shall be for his successor not to have the ability to undo his personal insurance policies.”
Mr. Duque disputed that, saying that his efforts — together with wage subsidies and a proposal to widen college entry — might assist put the economic system again on monitor. “We’ve concentrated in our administration to not promote polarization, however to maneuver the nation into the best path.”
Although a protégé of Mr. Uribe, the charismatic chief who revved up the federal government’s offensive in opposition to FARC almost twenty years in the past, Mr. Duque by no means absolutely match the populist mould. Born right into a politically outstanding household, the 45-year-old president labored for years in growth banking. He speaks in clipped, think-tank English: “I offers you very concise numbers,” he stated at one level earlier than doing precisely that.
He was elected after campaigning on rising financial development and altering the phrases of the peace accord with FARC, however he rapidly bumped into challenges. In 2019, frustration over the dearth of alternatives and doable pension adjustments sparked mass protests. So did a tax proposal this yr meant to shut a fiscal gap exacerbated by the pandemic.
Mr. Duque’s tax proposal had benefit, stated Luis Fernando Mejía, director of the Colombian analysis institute Fedesarrollo, however he appeared unable to promote it to the general public.
“It was a really, excellent reform,” he stated, “however he was not capable of consolidate political capital and to create an ample technique to push via a reform that I believe had been crucial.”
Mr. Duque can be making an attempt to string the coverage needle in a polarized time, making it rising troublesome to please each his occasion’s base and sad voters.
The tax protests grew to become a part of broader unrest over inequality and police violence. Some police used brutal and lethal pressure on demonstrators.
Within the interview, Mr. Duque cited his efforts to extend scrutiny on the police and to equip them with physique cameras. However he stated a few of the demonstrators had been spurred by “folks producing faux information” and different instigators to raise the violence.
His trickiest balancing act could also be enacting the peace accord with FARC. In 2019, his effort to change the phrases, together with harder sentencing for battle crimes, failed on authorized grounds. Internationally, he’s underneath intense strain to hold out the accord, however domestically, his occasion and different conservatives proceed to criticize it.
Simply weeks forward of the deal’s five-year anniversary, greater than half of its measures haven’t been utilized or have barely begun, based on the Kroc Institute on the College of Notre Dame, an impartial entity charged with oversight of the deal. Opposition teams and a few of the voters say Mr. Duque missed a crucial window to push it ahead.
Mr. Duque and his supporters level to the accord’s time-frame, which requires its tenets to be enacted over 15 years. Within the interview, he stated that he had completed greater than his predecessor, Juan Manuel Santos, to place in place the peace deal’s landownership overhauls and growth plans that will give poor farmers and former rebels jobs and alternatives.
“We’ve been not solely implementing, however the points that we’ve been implementing are going to be decisive for the evolution of the accords,” he stated, including, “We’ve made an excellent progress.”
Mr. Duque should steadiness competing pursuits abroad, as nicely. Tensions have risen between the USA — Colombia’s longtime ally — and China, a rising supply of enterprise for the nation. China, Colombia’s second-largest buying and selling companion after the USA, has invested in mines within the nation and efficiently bid on engineering contracts.
Mr. Duque stated that the Chinese language corporations had received the work in open bids and that relations with the USA remained heat. “We attempt to construct our relationship with our companions based mostly on funding and commerce and customary alternatives. However normally I’ve to spotlight that within the case of the USA, our alliance has been current for nearly 200 years, and we are going to proceed to see the USA as No. 1.”
With the USA, relations hit an ungainly second final yr when members of Mr. Duque’s occasion endorsed Donald J. Trump and Republicans within the election, scary a rare rebuke from the U.S. ambassador.
“I believe that was unwise,” Mr. Duque stated. “I believe that ought to haven’t been completed.”
These examples of polarization, he stated, has difficult efforts to repair deep-rooted issues. The world is polarized, he stated, as folks “join demagoguery and populism with violent sentiments and algorithms and folks producing faux information and manipulating the reality.”
He added, “That’s why we’ve concentrated in our administration to not promote polarization, however to maneuver the nation to the best path.”
Carlos Tejada reported from Seoul, and Julie Turkewitz from Bogotá, Colombia.
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