(Bloomberg) -- Colombians are far angrier about crooked officials than they are about all the other problems facing their nation, according to a new poll.
Asked to identify their top three concerns in LatAm Pulse, a survey conducted by AtlasIntel for Bloomberg News and published on Oct. 31, 77% of respondents mentioned “corruption”. Issues such as health care, inflation and immigration, which are among the top worries for people elsewhere in the region, barely registered in comparison.
“Crime, insecurity and drug-trafficking,” was the second-biggest worry, at 32%, followed by “the weakening of democracy” at 28%, the poll found.
Despite weak economic growth and above-target consumer price rises, only 9% of those surveyed identified “the economic situation and inflation” among Colombia’s biggest problems. And though the Andean nation has in recent years received nearly three million people fleeing neighboring Venezuela, just 3% of respondents thought that “migration” is among the main issues that need addressing.
Corruption is also among the top worries for people in Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Argentina, AtlasIntel found, though nowhere did it dwarf all other issues as it did in Colombia.
Since President Gustavo Petro took office two years ago, graft scandals have forced several of his close allies to step down, which has undermined his ability to advance his agenda of boosting workers’ rights and overhauling the nation’s pro-business economic model.
Petro’s son, Nicolás, faces accusations of illicit enrichment, which he denies. Ricardo Roa, who Petro put in charge of state oil company Ecopetrol SA, is under investigation for alleged violations of campaign financing limits. Roa also denies wrongdoing.
All of Colombia’s governments this century have faced graft scandals of various kinds. In the 2022 presidential election, a construction magnate, Rodolfo Hernández, managed to make it all the way to the runoff vote in large part by tapping voters’ rage over corruption.
Security Fears
On the security front, the Petro government is seeking “total peace” through talks with the illegal armed groups whose militias dominate much of the countryside. But peace talks with the ELN guerrilla movement broke down this year, while negotiations with other groups have so far had limited success.
Drug cartels and guerrilla factions have encroached on new territory, while a UN report found that production of cocaine rose to a record last year.
AtlasIntel conducted the survey with 2,034 people in Colombia, 1,803 in Mexico, 1,877 in Chile, and 1,839 in Argentina between October 10 and 15. The polls have a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.
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