BOGOT\u00c1, Colombia\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Iv\u00e1n Cepeda, an ally of outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro, refused to immediately accept the result of the first round of presidential voting after falling behind hard-line outsider Aberaldo de la Espriella in Sunday\u2019s election.<\/p>\n
Cepeda and De la Espriella, who fashions himself as a President Trump-like \u201ctough on crime\u201d figure, are set to head to a runoff election June. But Cepeda and Petro on Sunday night sowed doubt in the result and claimed \u2014 so far without evidence \u2014 that hundreds of thousands of votes were manipulated and that foreign actors interfered with the result. <\/p>\n
Cepeda said he was waiting for electoral authorities to scrutinize the results before accepting the election.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will not comment on tonight\u2019s results until the vote-counting committees have fully clarified this matter,\u201d Cepeda said.<\/p>\n
Cepeda won 41% of the vote, while De la Espriella won 44% of the votes, according to electoral authorities. Paloma Valencia, a candidate for Colombia\u2019s establishment party who pitched herself as a centrist, got less than 7% of the vote.<\/p>\n
Cepeda was consistently leading polls in the run-up to the Sunday vote, but in recent weeks De la Espriella rapidly gained support with a promise that he would crack down on armed groups.<\/p>\n
Cepeda appeared to acknowledge, however, that the vote was going to a runoff election, saying that \u201cwe are going to win in the second round.\u201d<\/p>\n
De la Espriella \u2014 a newcomer known as \u201cEl Tigre, or the Tiger \u2014 has portrayed himself as a supporter of Trump, vowing to crack down on criminal groups. Though the result showed him winning the most votes, he fell short of the 50% needed to win in the first round.<\/p>\n
Cepeda is a progressive senator and Petro ally who has promised to carry on a fraught push for \u201ctotal peace.\u201d Petro refused to accept the results of the election Sunday night in a post on X, claiming that the vote was manipulated and the results were \u201cnot binding.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Cepeda was comfortably ahead in polls throughout most of the campaign, he the apparently close result Sunday is likely to spell trouble for the June runoff, where De la Espriella is expected to scoop up many of Valencia\u2019s voters.<\/p>\n
De la Espriella and his supporters celebrated Sunday night at their campaign headquarters in the coastal city of Barranquilla.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 21 days we\u2019re going to change the history of Colombia,\u201d he said triumphantly. <\/p>\n
Peace deals or a crackdown<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
The election has also underscored two sharply diverging visions for the future of peace in a country marked by years of conflict. <\/p>\n
On one side, Cepeda has promised to continue Petro\u2019s progressive agenda and a largely failed effort of trying to negotiate peace pacts with armed groups, following a plan would be likely to sharply contrast with Trump\u2019s vision for Latin America. <\/p>\n
On the other side, De la Espriella has promised to fiercely crack down on criminal groups and build 10 mega-prisons, following in a similar vein as El Salvador\u2019s President Nayib Bukele in his war on gangs, which has been plagued by abuses, according to findings by human rights groups. <\/p>\n
\u201cToday\u2019s election isn\u2019t just important for us, it\u2019s important for all of Latin America,\u201d said Juan Acevedo, a 62-year-old sociologist walking out of a voting station in Colombia\u2019s capital, Bogot\u00e1, on Sunday morning. \u201cWhoever wins here will suggest to the region if progressive policies will continue or if things are going to return to the right.\u201d<\/p>\n
A referendum on Petro<\/p>\n
The election \u2014 10 years after Colombia signed a historic peace pact with guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC \u2014 is seen as a referendum on Petro\u2019s policies. <\/p>\n
The deal a decade ago had offered hope to break the nation\u2019s 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\u2019s government to make territorial gains. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
Still, Cepeda and Petro have maintained strong support among many Colombians because of progressive policies advanced under Petro, such as boosting the minimum wage.<\/p>\n
De la Espriella and Valencia have touted their affinity for Trump, though Valencia\u2019s electoral loss dealt another blow to a once powerful political current known as Uribismo.<\/p>\n
Divided on the way forward<\/p>\n
Maria Eugenia, a 57-year-old seamstress, said Friday in downtown Bogot\u00e1 that said she welcomed an all-out offensive on an expanding slate of criminal groups, regardless of the human cost.<\/p>\n
While she approved of Petro\u2019s pushes to improve the country\u2019s medical infrastructure, she said she was voting for De la Espriella because violence in rural areas of the country had gotten out of hand. She said negotiating peace pacts was simply \u201crewarding\u201d armed groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, whenever you come down with a heavy hand, there\u2019s always going to be debate,\u201d she said. \u201cBut some people are going to have to fall to clean up what needs to be cleaned.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s cycle of violence.<\/p>\n
He said he supports Cepeda, adding that while the government hasn\u2019t done a perfect job \u2014 failing to pass ambitious reforms and follow through on promises to reduce violence \u2014 it was better to continue pushing forward with their political coalition\u2019s efforts to take a different approach in addressing the country\u2019s violence. <\/p>\n
He added that his main critique of Petro\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a country that has lived through 60 years of conflict,\u201d Acevedo said. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Janetsky and Su\u00e1rez write for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOGOT\u00c1, Colombia\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Iv\u00e1n Cepeda, an ally of outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro, refused to immediately accept the result of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":835821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[266562,1582,276,12575,9958,278559,342639,8988,45913,342638,2961,1612,224,5337,311763,342640,342641,34963,8572,13235],"class_list":["post-835820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-armed-group","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-colombia","tag-country","tag-criminal-group","tag-de-la-espriella","tag-election","tag-first-round","tag-ivan-cepeda","tag-la","tag-latin-america","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-paloma-valencia","tag-petro","tag-progressive-policy","tag-result","tag-violence","tag-vote"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116672394054589382","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=835820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/835821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}