BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — Tough-on-crime lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella and peace-builder Iván Cepeda were leading the vote counts in the first round of Colombia's presidential election on Sunday, and are to face off in a runoff in the South American nation later in June.
De la Espriella — a newcomer known as “El Tigre, or “The Tiger,” — has sought to portray himself as a supporter of President Donald Trump, vowing to crack down on criminal groups.
He leads the race with more than 43% of the votes after nearly 98% of the ballots were counted, Colombia’s electoral authorities said late Sunday, but fell short of the 50% of votes needed to win in the first round of voting.
Second is Cepeda, a progressive senator and an ally of outgoing President Gustavo Petro who has promised to carry on a fraught push for “total peace.” Cepeda scooped up less than 41% of the vote.
Paloma Valencia, a candidate for Colombia’s establishment party who pitched herself as a centrist, fell short of moving into the next round with less than 7% of the vote.
While Cepeda coasted comfortably ahead in polls throughout the campaign, the senator and de la Espriella were neck-and-neck on Sunday night, which is likely to spell trouble in the June runoff, where de La Espriella is likely to scoop up many of the voters that threw their support behind Valencia.
The election underscored two sharply diverging visions for the future of peace in a country marked by years of conflict. Voters across South America are increasingly ditching leaders that pitched progressive policies — such as providing opportunities to young people and rooting out corruption, and solving security issues and have instead to heavy-handed security crackdowns like in El Salvador.
It also comes as the Trump administration is placing renewed pressure on the region.
On one side, Cepeda has promised to continue Petro’s progressive agenda and a largely failed effort of trying to negotiate peace pacts with armed groups, following a plan that’s likely to sharply contrast with Trump’s vision for Latin America.
On the other side, de la Espriella has promised to fiercely crackdown on criminal groups and build 10 mega-prisons, following in a similar vein as El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele in his war on gangs, which has fueled accusations of human rights abuses.
“Today’s election isn’t just important for us, it’s important for all of Latin America,” said Juan Acevedo, a 62-year-old sociologist walking out of a voting station in Colombia’s capital on Sunday morning. “Whoever wins here will suggest to the region if progressive policies will continue or if things are going to return to the right.”
A referendum on Petro
The vote was seen as a referendum on Petro’s policies, 10 years after Colombia signed an historic peace pact with guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
That agreement offered hope to break the nation’s vicious cycle of fighting between rebel groups and the government, but violence has roared back since then, in part because armed groups have taken advantage of peace negotiations with Petro's government to make territorial gains.
That came to a head in the lead-up to the election. Criminal groups have increasingly launched drone strikes, armed attacks have plagued the race and last June, 39-year-old politician and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay was fatally shot at a political rally. Still, Cepeda and Petro have maintained strong support among many because of progressive policies pushed forward under Petro, such as boosting the minimum wage.
In Colombia, a historic rightwing stronghold, Valencia’s electoral loss dealt another blow to a once powerful political current known as Uribismo, indicating that conservative voters are turning away from more traditional political parties in favor of Bukele and de la Espriella’s punitive populism.
Both de la Espriella and Valencia have touted their affinity for Trump even as he has taken a more aggressive stance toward Latin America than any U.S. president in decades and has pressured nations like Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico to more forcefully crack down on criminal groups.
Colombians also disagree on how best to tackle the violence
Maria Eugenia, a 57-year-old seamstress who was stitching a pair of jeans on Friday in downtown Bogotá, Colombia's capital, said she welcomed an all-out offensive on an expanding slate of criminal groups, regardless of the human cost.
While she approved of Petro’s pushes to improve the country's medical infrastructure, she said she was voting for de la Espriella because violence in rural areas of the country has gotten out of hand. She said negotiating peace pacts was simply “rewarding” armed groups.
“Of course, whenever you come down with a heavy hand, there’s always going to be debate,” she said. “But some people are going to have to fall to clean up what needs to be cleaned.”
Others, like Acevedo, the sociologist strolling out of a polling station on Sunday with packs of other voters, said a security crackdown like the one promoted by de la Espriella would only be returning to past military campaigns that he said only reinforced Colombia's cycle of violence.
He said he planned to vote for Cepeda, adding that while the government hasn't done a perfect job — failing to pass ambitious reforms and follow through on promises to reduce violence — it was better to continue pushing forward with their political coalition's efforts to take a different approach in addressing the country's violence.
He added that his main critique of Petro's administration was the power grabs made by criminal groups as they negotiated with the government. He said he hoped that if Cepeda won, he would strike a better balance between negotiating peace and maintaining control over those groups.
“We're a country that has lived through 60 years of conflict,” Acevedo said. “The danger here is that we return to the times where everyone is saying that the only way to solve our problems is with bullets and more war.”
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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
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