Bogotá, the city where the altitude makes you giddy and the politics make you dizzy. Today, Colombians head to the polls in an election that could send shivers down the spine of Washington’s State Department and, more importantly, have the men in Whitehall licking their lips over potential trade deals. The choice, as ever, is between a tweed-suited, Oxford-educated neoliberal who loves free trade and a grizzled populist who thinks the IMF is a satanic cabal. Lovely.
The incumbent, a man whose face is a roadmap of Botox injections and whose policies are a photocopy of the Chicago School, is running against a candidate who promises to nationalise the coffee plantations and rename the peso the ‘Bolivarian florin’. The US, naturally, is sweating bullets. They’ve got their fingers in every pie from the cocaine trade to the emerald mines, and any disruption is a catastrophe for their meticulously constructed system of narco-capitalism.
But here’s where it gets interesting, my gin-soaked friends. London, the city that invented financial chicanery, is watching this electoral circus like a hawk eyeing a particularly juicy cornish pasty. The Brexiteers, those charmingly delusional chaps who thought leaving the EU would turn Britain into a global trading titan, see Colombia as the next Singapore. Never mind that Colombia is a country where half the population lives in the mountains and the other half in a state of perpetual civil war. Details, details.
The trade opportunity is, of course, in the lucrative market for umbrellas and raincoats. Yes, you heard it here first. London’s finest rainwear manufacturers have been lobbying the Foreign Office to secure a deal for Colombian waterproofs. Why? Because the Colombian rainy season is a damp squib, and the locals have been using banana leaves for too long. It’s a multibillion-dollar market, people. And if we can hook them on British tweed brollies, we’ll have them for life.
But back to the election. The populist candidate, Señor Carlos ‘El Coco’ González, has promised to expel all foreign mining companies and nationalise the internet. His campaign slogan: ‘Vote for me, and I’ll give you free Wi-Fi and an alpaca.’ The establishment candidate, Don Ignacio ‘Yacht-Boy’ Rodriguez, has countered with a promise to build a wall around the Amazon rainforest and make the coca farmers pay for it. It’s a tight race.
The US has already threatened sanctions if the populist wins. They’ve deployed a fleet of drones to monitor the polling stations and a team of hypnotists to influence undecided voters. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson’s government has sent a delegation of umbrella salesmen to Bogotá, carrying sample cases of the finest Marlow-made brollies. The British Ambassador, a man whose moustache is as stiff as his upper lip, has been seen shaking hands with both candidates, whispering sweet nothings about trade agreements.
In a move that could only be described as gonzo brilliance, the Colombian election commission has decided to hold the vote on a Wednesday. Why? Because they can. And because it’s guaranteed to cause maximum confusion. Voters will have to choose between a man who wants to turn the country into a socialist utopia and a man who wants to turn it into a tax haven for British oligarchs. It’s the choice between being poor and miserable or being rich and miserable.
As the polls close, the clock ticks. Will London’s rainwear industry flourish? Will Washington’s cocaine supply be cut off? Will the alpacas finally get the free Wi-Fi they deserve? Only the gin gods know. Biff Thistlethwaite, signing off from the edge of the abyss.
