Results of the high-stakes elections, which will reshape the country's fragile peace process and relations with the United States, are expected at around 6 pm local time (2300GMT).With over 89.58 percent of voting centers reporting, White House-backed lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella had a lead of 50.1 percent against leftist Senator Ivan Cepeda, who was at 48.25 percent, according to figures from the National Registry.Security dominated a hyper-fractious campaign that was marred by guerrilla bomb attacks, hundreds of threats against candidates and the murder of a leading conservative presidential hopeful."The atmosphere is much more tense than in past elections," Angie Munoz, a 30-year-old digital marketing employee, told AFP in Bogota."There's a lot of aggression on both sides," she said. "We're feeling very uncertain about what's going to happen today."
Around 41 million voters in Colombia were eligible to choose between stoic left-wing Senator Ivan Cepeda (left) and hard-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella (right) © Luis ACOSTA, JOAQUIN SARMIENTO / AFP/File
Frontrunner De la Espriella has won US President Donald Trump's "complete and total endorsement" and hopes to ride a wave that has swept rightist candidates to power across Latin America.The dual US-Colombian national, who calls himself "The Tiger," won May's first round vote promising to wage war on cartels and guerrilla groups. "Today is the most important ballot in Colombia's history," he said as he voted in his Caribbean stronghold, Barranquilla.Wearing a national football jersey, he was surrounded by hundreds of supporters who sang the national anthem, a nationalism De la Espriella has been keen to stoke.
