Right-wing candidate and Trump ally Aberaldo de la Espriella took the lead in a closely contested first-round presidential vote in Colombia, setting up a runoff with Iván Cepeda, an ally of Colombia’s outgoing President Gustavo Petro.
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.
It was a stronger-than-expected showing for 47-year-old De la Espriella, a pro‑Trump lawyer, singer and clothier who calls himself "The Tiger" and has billed himself as a political norm-smashing outsider.
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.
