Once again, after 4 years of waiting, Colombia calls its citizens to vote and participate in the country’s democracy. Presidential elections will be held nationwide on March 27, 2018 to select the person who will lead the country until 2022. After months of campaigns and debates, only 5 candidates are left, and the list is still being narrowed down, until only two of them remain. To pick from those two remaining choices, millions of Colombians will use their political right and vote for the candidate they agree with the most and believe will do the best for the nation.

The political spectrum of Colombia right now has the community divided between the right wing, or conservatives, and the left wing, or liberals. Some candidates are considered to be extreme right and extreme left. Presidential candidate Iván Duque, member of the political party Centro Democrático, has been placed on the extreme right side of the scale, while opposing candidate Gustavo Petro, from the Colombia Humana political movement, has been demonstrating his extreme left ideals during his campaign and speeches. Other candidates such as German Vargas Lleras and Humberto De La Calle are considered to be more neutral candidates, with Lleras on the right and De La Calle on the left. The last candidate available is Sergio Fajardo which is the only candidate on center in terms of political ideals, who is supported by the Partido Verde and Polo Democratico.

How does the TCS community feel about the candidates?

A poll taken by 24 TCS students from both Middle and High school demonstrated a support of 92% of such TCS student group to candidate Ivan Duque (22 votes), and 4 percent each to candidates Humberto De La Calle and German Vargas Lleras (1 vote each). This poll demonstrates the big support TCS student have towards the extreme right ideals, and Ivan Duque, the candidate who represents these ideas. One of the biggest supporter for such candidate is 11th grader Alejandro Gomez. This student stated he gives his support to this candidate because he believes that, “some of the candidates should not be running for the job because they follow some policies in place that might result in failure in Colombia.” He believes that Duque is the best choice because, “his policies of implementing lots of incentives in the economy, such as six tax free days would be great for the upcoming years regarding economics.”

Although most TCS students have a similar political affiliations given that they have the same or similar social and economical classes, other members of the TCS community do not feel the same about the presidential elections. 11th grade high school philosophy teacher, Felipe Naranjo, said, “I do not think Petro will turn Colombia into another Venezuela and neither that Duque will be controlled by ex-president Uribe.” This is regarding the common attacks made toward both of the strongest candidates, demonstrating that Naranjo does not view the political spectrum as the media states and as most TCS students do. Even though Naranjo decided not to state his presidential candidate preference, because he considers it personal, he did say, “I have my candidate decided now, but anyhow I am not sure how well he will do.”

How do Colombian citizens feel about the candidates?

Multiple polls have been taken by public media, government entities and private poll taking companies in order to see how the citizens of the country feel about the different candidates. The poll taker Cifras y Conceptos took a poll for television canal and radio station Caracol. This poll taken showed that 34 percent of the citizens support candidate Duque, 22.5% lean towards Gustavo Petro, Fajardo has 13.8% of the voters, Vargas Lleras has 13.2% support, and De La Calle has the least amount of followers with only 3 percent. The poll provides statistical evidence for candidates to know and understand how their campaigns have been going so far, and also demonstrates that the political spectrum of the nation is greatly divided.

The number of supporters per candidate of the poll taken to all Colombian citizens, shows how different TCS community thinks about politics in regard to the rest of the country. Each region of the nation generally has its very own political tendencies and the population of such regions most follow the same political leaders and have similar political ideals. Specifically in the department of Antioquia and the city of Medellin, the habitants of such places have been characterised for being great supporters of extreme right candidates such as this years representative Ivan Duque. This demonstrates a political correlation between TCS community and the citizens of Medellin and Antioquia over all, but great differences with other regions of the country.

Not everyone in TCS thinks the same

TCS community support towards Ivan Duque and his proposals is clear according to polls taken and interviews made to different kinds of people, but there are some exceptions too. 10th grade student, Juan Felipe Gaviria, does not follow the TCS tendency of supporting Duque, he believes that the best presidential candidate is Humberto De La Calle. “De La Calle is the candidate with the most experience of all, and the best ideals. He led the national assembly that created the 1991 Colombian constitution and also allowed Colombia to end the conflict with FARC after leading negotiation with this guerrilla for several years,” said Gaviria about his candidate.

Gaviria has read and understood the proposals given by the candidates he supports, and is aware of the other candidates propositions too. Even though he is highly informed about the elections and the different candidates, he, like many other students in the school, regrets “not being an adult to be allowed to vote.”