List of political parties in Colombia

This article lists political parties in Colombia.

Colombia had historically maintained a two-party system, which means that there were two dominant political parties, resulting in considerable difficulty for anybody to achieve major electoral success under the banner of any other party. Dissidents from the two main parties also had chances to win elections. Nowadays it is a multi-party system with four main parties.

(*) Citizen Option Party is the union of four previous small right-wing parties:

Indigenous Parties

Afro-Colombian communities Parties

The constitution of 1991, in order to increase the participation of more people in politics, promoted the end of bipartisan making easy to create new political parties. However, this became counter-productive as many traditional politicians left traditional parties to form their own movements who had very few representation and not clear ideologies. Also, paramilitary groups developed many regional political parties in order to penetrate the State. In 1999, nearly 200 parties had representation in congress, most of them with only one or two congressmen.

Under the Political Reform of 1994, any party that does not get at least 2% of the vote to the Senate or of the electoral quotient to its circumscription to the House of Representatives, is legally dead. This is to promote neater debates and ideologically clear positions in the Congress. In 1994, the number of parties went down from nearly 200 to 106, and in 2004 only 18 parties are legally recognized.

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