I'm John Bachelor. I welcome Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the America's columnist and editor for the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Once upon a time, there was a metaphor called Pink Tide, and every presidential election in the Americas was going with the pink tide to the left. And now, not so much. Mary, a very good evening to you. We see the success in Chile,

reversing a decision to the left of some years. We see certainly the success in Argentina.

And there's a big election coming in Brazil later, but right now we're focused on your new column on

Colombia. There are new candidates because Mr. Gustav

Petro cannot succeed himself by constitution. And the candidates provide a choice left or right,

especially on the right, though, there are names to learn who is paloma valencia what does she

represent as a presidential candidate good evening to you mayor well good evening john yeah

columbia is is is in everybody's sights this year because it has this election on may 31st

and gustavo petro who is a former terrorist, very hard left guy,

cannot, as you say, run again.

So most Colombians seem to want to get rid of him and defeat his successor in his party,

a guy called Ivan Cepeda.

So it falls to someone on the right to attract all those center right votes

and maybe some people in the moderate middle left. And Paloma Valencia won the primary

she competed in on March 8th with 55% of the vote. So that was very impressive

victory for her. The next closest competitor was many places away, I think something in

around the 20% mark. So she is the candidate of Alvaro Ribe, who is a former president, was very popular,

defeated the guerrilla, and is still very active in politics. So she has been considered sort of

the number one choice here for carrying the flag of the right in the

May election. And she's facing the same difficulties that came in the last time you tell me.

The right divides at the poll. There are two votes. One is the end of May and the other is

a third week in June.

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