BOGOTÁ, Colombia — 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.
Colombian voters are weighing peace deals or a crackdown
Voters across Latin America are increasingly ditching leaders that pitched progressive policies aimed at addressing the root issues of conflict, such as lack of opportunities for young people and corruption. Instead, voters have increasingly turned to candidates promising heavy-handed security crackdowns.
The polarized vote comes as the Trump administration is playing a more aggressive role in Latin America than any U.S. government in decades, placing mounting pressure on countries like Colombia, Mexico, and Ecuador to crack down on crime.
The election has also underscored two sharply diverging visions for the future of peace in a country marked by years of conflict.
On one side, Cepeda has promised to continue Petro's progressive agenda and a largely failed effort 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 crack down on criminal groups and build 10 mega-prisons, echoing the war on gangs policy of El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, which has driven down homicide rates but 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."
Vote is seen as a referendum on Petro
The election — 10 years after Colombia signed an historic peace pact with guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC — as seen as a referendum on Petro's policies.
The deal a decade ago had offered hope to break the nation's vicious cycle of fighting between rebel groups and the government. But violence has since roared back, 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.
Both de la Espriella and Valencia have touted their affinity for Trump, though Valencia's electoral loss dealt another blow to a once powerful political current known as Uribismo.
Colombians are divided on the way forward
Maria Eugenia, a 57-year-old seamstress 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 effectively 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 up."
Others, like Acevedo, the sociologist, said a security crackdown such as the one promoted by de la Espriella meant a return to past military campaigns that he said only reinforced Colombia's cycle of violence.
He said he supports 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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