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Edited on Wed Jun-01-11 05:09 PM by gbscar
Gustavo Petro started out as an M-19 guerrilla back in the day and was even tortured by the Colombian military.
Afterwards, he became a fairly popular representative and senator who spent a lot of time during the Uribe administration (2002-2010) denouncing the horrors of paramilitarism in Sucre and Antioquia, in particular, as well as generally criticizing what he rightfully called the "mafia" that had taken control of the Colombian government. For this reason, it's not surprising that Petro was repeatedly threatened and affected by the illegal spying activities of the DAS.
Even before his 2010 presidential bid, however, things had started to become difficult for him, politically speaking.
Petro clashed -and ultimately broke away from- the Polo Democrático as a result of disputes with the ANAPO faction led by the Moreno Rojas brothers, grandsons of the 1953-1957 military dictator who briefly reinvented himself as a 1970 populist candidate (in retrospect, it's hard to say just how progressive General Rojas Pinilla would have been in practice, but at the very least he did represent an alternative to the bipartisan "National Front" which monopolized Colombian politics at the time).
About half of that dispute was simply the typical political infighting you'd expect from a relatively new party created out of a very diverse coalition of left and center-left factions, which is something we shouldn't try to excuse or shy away from acknowledging as a structural problem, but in the end it also had to do with the corruption scandals involving the current mayor of Bogotá, Samuel Moreno Rojas, and the infamous Nule Group (which, not surprisingly, has also been linked to corrupt contracts on the national stage, since they were also very cozy with the Uribe administration).
Petro was already angry at the Morenos for their refusal to give him their support in internal party struggles and it's no wonder he began to denounce their corruption when the first chance presented itself, even long before the Nule Group scandal was revealed.
You could argue that Petro was a bit cynical there, by turning against those within the party who didn't ally with him, but then again the more progressive or even revolutionary sectors of the Polo Democrático had no issues siding with the Morenos and ANAPO until recent events made that impossible, ignoring or downplaying early accusations of corruption, so it's hard to tell which kind of cynicism would be worse.
During the presidential campaign, Petro was only grudgingly given the support of both the ANAPO and the more traditional sectors (MOIR, PCC, etc.) of the left. Perhaps he was in too much of a hurry to become president, but running against both Santos (the candidate of the establishment, despite being Uribe's last remaining choice when his personal pick -Andres Felipe Arias- became unavailable) and Mockus (the not-quite-leftwing alternative who nevertheless had a good chunk of reformist or progressive support) was a rather bad decision in hindsight.
After the elections, however, it became clear that Petro also made the mistake of trying to appeal too hard to the "center" when it's obvious that the murderous Colombian right will never forgive him for being a guerrilla, no matter what he does. He had already done some of this before (giving symbolic support to an ultra-conservative Inspector General as a political maneuver, even though his election was already a given thanks to the Uribist majority in Congress), yes, but everything went to hell later. He broke party discipline to talk to Santos, the party didn't give him the top leadership position he wanted, nor did it agree to his other political proposals and demands, and thus Petro quit.
In Bogotá, the lack of any strong candidate from the Colombian left does give Petro's independent run an edge as the closest thing to an alternative or progressive choice, considering the sorry state of the Green Party after Uribe's tactics have easily divided it over Peñalosa, but we'll have to see what happens.
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