Will the real Mr Santos please speak up

UNTIL a few weeks ago, nobody seriously thought that Juan Manuel Santos would fail to win a second term in an election on May 25th. By any reasonable standard, his has been a good government. Colombia’s economy is in decent shape, and unemployment and poverty have fallen steadily. Yet suddenly the polls suggest that Mr Santos is vulnerable. They give him 25%-35% of the vote, with the rest split among four rivals. So a run-off election (on June 15th) is likely: if his opponent is Enrique Peñalosa of the soft-left Green Alliance, Mr Santos would lose narrowly, according to one poll.

That would have huge implications for Colombia. For the election comes as the government and the FARC guerrillas are locked in peace talks which offer the country its best-ever chance of ending an armed conflict that has dogged it since the 1960s. Peace would not only improve Colombians’ lives but add a point or more to economic growth, Mr Santos told Bello in an interview in his modest office in the Nariño Palace in Bogotá. Lose the election, and that chance might be gone for years. Yet paradoxically, this momentous election has failed to engage the voters. The political climate is barely tepid, and turnout threatens to be low.