The bottom line
Colombia counts down to a knife-edge runoff. Campaigning closed over the weekend before the June 21 vote, and the last polls put the conservative Abelardo de la Espriella roughly eight points ahead of the leftist Iván Cepeda, in a final week soured by Cepeda’s accusation that his rival’s camp plotted a staged attack to sway the result.
The world is in a buying mood, and the Federal Reserve holds the next card. A relief rally that began last week has gone global, with Japan and South Korea setting records and the dollar easing in a backdrop that gently lifts Latin American currencies and shares, and all eyes now turn to the United States central bank, which meets on June 16 and 17.
Two slow crises grind on beneath the vote. Peru’s runoff is still unresolved, with Keiko Fujimori ahead of Roberto Sánchez by about eighteen thousand votes and no winner due until July, while Bolivia entered a forty-fifth day of road blockades as its main union federation weighed whether to dig in or talk.
Colombia heads into the final week before its June 21 presidential runoff as a global rally lifts the region. Photo: The Rio Times.
