Gustavo Francisco Petro Urrego is a Colombian economist, politician, former guerrilla fighter, senator of Italian descent, and the president-elect of Colombia. He defeated Rodolfo Hernández Suárez in the second round of the presidential election on 19 June 2022. Petro is the first candidate to reference themselves as a leftist to be elected president of Colombia.
At 17 years of age, he became a member of the guerrilla group 19th of April Movement, which later evolved into the M-19 Democratic Alliance, a political party in which he was elected to be member of the Chamber of Representatives in the 1991 election. Petro served as a senator as a member of the Alternative Democratic Pole party following the 2006 parliamentary election with the second-largest vote in the country. In 2009, he resigned his position to run for President of Colombia in the 2010 presidential election, finishing fourth in the race.
After problems and ideological differences with the leaders of the Alternative Democratic Pole, he founded the movement Humane Colombia to compete for the mayoralty of Bogotá. On 30 October 2011, he was elected Mayor of Bogotá in the local elections of the city, a position he assumed on 1 January 2012. On 27 May 2018, he came second in the first round of the presidential election with over 25% of the votes and lost in the run-off election on 17 June.
