Petro’s only chance might be May 29th
Here we present the proposals of the three leading presidential candidates: Gustavo Petro, Federico Gutiérrez and Rodolfo Hernández, in comparative tables. In the general view of the economy, Gutiérrez seems market and business friendly, whereas Petro would pursue interventionist policies, and Hernández would go for budget prudence and revisionist commercial policy. In tax reform, Gutiérrez would pursue moderate reform (1.2% of GDP), Petro an unprecedentedly aggressive one (5% of GDP), and Hernández a VAT reform, and elimination of the financial transactions tax.
In monetary policy, all candidates mention some type of extended role for the Central Bank, although Petro’s and Hernández’s seem more invasive. Labor regulation presents one of the harshest ideological divides, since Petro proposes that the government would be the employer of last resort, a concept that pushes Keynesianism into a permanent role of employing everyone out of work. We hope we are misinterpreting Petro. He would also make firing workers more difficult, and pay for households’ activities, something that could carry a high public expenditure, calculated by the Fajardo team at nearly 3% of GDP.
The biggest presidential race surprise has been Rodolfo Hernández: the 77-year-old candidate for whom, à-la-Mexico’s AMLO, corruption is the root cause of almost all of Colombia’s ills. He is determined to use his experience as mayor of Bucaramanga, and his financial savvy as a social housing builder, to combat public resources mismanagement. Since he has neither a full-fledged governing program nor a well-structured group of advisers, we can only guess at how his administration might be.
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