BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — Tough-on-crime outsider Aberaldo de la Espriella took the lead in Colombia’s presidential race in the first round of voting Sunday night, setting up a runoff with Iván Cepeda, an ally of Colombia’s outgoing President Gustavo Petro who questioned the results of the election.
With no candidate taking an outright majority of the vote, the election will head to a second round in June.
But Cepeda and Petro sowed doubt in the results of the first round, claiming without evidence that hundreds of thousands of votes were manipulated and that foreign actors manipulated the results of the election.
Cepeda said he was waiting for electoral authorities to scrutinize the results before accepting the election. “Only when the vote-counting commissions have fully clarified what happened will we comment on tonight’s results,” Cepeda said, though he acknowledged the vote was likely going to a second round.
Cepeda won 41% of the vote, while de la Espriella won 44% of the votes, with 99.98% of the results counted by electoral authorities. Cepeda is a progressive senator who has promised to carry on a fraught plan to achieve “total peace” by negotiating peace pacts with guerrillas and criminal gangs. He was consistently leading polls in the run up to the Sunday vote, but in the weeks leading up to the election de la Espriella rapidly gained support with a promise that he would crack down on armed groups.
The neck-and-neck results likely spell trouble for Cepeda in the run-off election, as de la Espriella is expected to scoop up support from voters who threw their support behind another conservative candidate in the first round.
De la Espriella — a newcomer known as El Tigre, or “The Tiger” — has sought to portray himself as a supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump. “Let the United States of America and democratic parties monitor this runoff election. I will lead this battle; I will be Colombia’s best warrior,” de la Espriella said in an impassioned speech Sunday night, pounding his chest behind bullet-proof glass in front of supporters.
apnews.com
