The far-right De la Espriella will be Colombia’s next president, according to preliminary vote count
Colombia on Sunday concluded the most closely contested election in its history and, according to the preliminary count, elected the far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella as its next president over the leftist Iván Cepeda. The preliminary tally gave the controversial criminal lawyer a razor-thin victory by less than one percentage point: with 99.97% of polling stations counted, De la Espriella obtained 49.66% of the vote versus Cepeda’s 48.7%, a difference of roughly 250,000 ballots. The leftist contender accepted the preliminary count but said he would not recognize the result until the final tally is completed, and he has challenged 33,000 (27%) of the 120,000 polling stations. In the same vein, President Gustavo Petro said that “neither one of them can proclaim themselves president.”
