Anti-FARC conservative wins as Colombia presidential vote faces runoff

Conservative candidate Ivan Duque took a commanding lead in Colombia’s presidential election, partial results showed, however fell well wanting the fifty per cent threshold required to avoid a second-round runoff next month.

A 41-year-old legislator, Duque can face his leftist rival, former guerrilla Gustavo Petro, within the run-off on June seventeen.

With most of the vote counted, Duque had polled thirty-nine.7 per cent of the votes, compared to Petro’s twenty four.8 per cent. Petro beat off a late challenge from former city city manager Sergio Fajardo to narrowly take the second runoff spot.

It was the primary presidential poll in [*fr1] a century freed from the threat of the FARC, although Duque, 41, has campaigned powerfully on a pledge to rewrite a peace agreement with the previous rebel movement.

Polling closed on schedule at 2: thirty am IST once eight hours of “totally normal” balloting, aforementioned electoral authority chairman male monarch Galindo. national capital and different major cities reportable a high turnout during a country wherever citizen self-discipline is historically around fifty per cent.

The peaceful election was AN action celebrated by outgoing President Juan Manuel urban center once casting his ballot in national capital. “So so much not one balloting station has had to be moved for security reasons,” he aforementioned during a televised speech.

“It’s been several decades since that is going on. In different words, these elections area unit about to be the foremost secure, the calmest.” Ironically, the peace urban center created with the FARC, that is currently a party, has opened sharp divisions, mirrored within the leading candidates to succeed him.

Duque has vowed to rewrite AN accord he sees as too lenient on a bunch that waged a decades-long war of terror in Colombia before remodeling itself into a party. “I need a country of lawfulness, a full-on fight against corruption, a rustic wherever peace will breathe throughout the land,” aforementioned Duque once casting his ballot in national capital.

Outside one national capital topographic point, Paula Rubio, 38, aforementioned she voted for Duque “to maintain order within the country.” Petro, a former member of the disbanded M-19 rebel cluster, has defied expectations during a country wherever presidential elections have historically been the domain of the proper.

Petro aforementioned he needed a Colombia “present and future” while not hate or retribution and to go away behind “the machinery of corruption.” The 58-year-old rallied several Colombians together with his campaign speeches against difference and corruption, creating