Progressives around Colombia are celebrating today the triumph of the left in Bogota’s municipal elections. Samuel Moreno of the Democratic Pole party won the spot as mayor (a.k.a. the second most powerful man in Colombia) despite the theatrics of president Alvaro Uribe’s counter-campaign. Columnist María Jimena Duzán of Colombia’s El Tiempo lays out how Uribe’s antics actually ended up producing more support for Moreno:

The flattening triumph of Samuel Moreno in the elections for Bogota’s mayor, aside from consolidating the Democratic Pole as the premiere political force in the capital, demonstrates that we Bogotanos don’t like the president sticking his nose into our business and telling us whom we should vote for. His intervention was so crude that it ended producing the opposite effect. In the end, this strategy took votes away from Peñalosa [the candidate Uribe endorsed].

Getting to this point hasn’t been easy for Bogota. It seems that most mainstream media isn’t batting an eye, but the BBC reports that 21 candidates have been assassinated in violent acts leading up to the regional and local elections.

Speculation mounts as many wonder if this win for the left in Bogota could mean a political shift for Colombia at the national level. It could, but it doesn’t always happen in Latin American countries where the job of the capital’s mayor is considered such an elite post. Take Mexico City, for example, where there have been three consecutive leftist mayors and there is currently a conservative party ruling at the national level. But then again, it’s up for debate whether or not the results of the elections that put the PAN in office were legitimate.

Via / BBC News and El Tiempo