Colombia’s far-right presidential candidate Espriella wins first round of vote ahead of runoff

Supporters of presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella celebrate at the end of election day in Barranquilla, Colombia, on Sunday. He faces a runoff against Iván Cepeda. Photograph: Ernesto Guzmán Jr/EPA View image in fullscreen Supporters of presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella celebrate at the end of election day in Barranquilla, Colombia, on Sunday. He faces a runoff against Iván Cepeda. Photograph: Ernesto Guzmán Jr/EPA Colombia’s far-right presidential candidate Espriella wins first round of vote ahead of runoff Lawyer and Trump admirer has risen rapidly in the polls and will face Iván Cepeda in election runoff in three weeks The far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella won the first round of Colombia’s presidential election on Sunday and will face senator Iván Cepeda, the candidate backed by leftwing president Gustavo Petro, in the runoff. With 99.97% of ballots counted, the outsider and Donald Trump admirer Espriella secured 43.7% of the vote – just over 10.3m votes – compared with 40.9% (about 9.6m votes) for Cepeda, a philosopher and human rights activist who has served as a senator since 2014. The two will face each other in a runoff on 21 June. Although polls in recent weeks had already detected Espriella’s rapid rise, most still showed him trailing Cepeda, who for months seemed to hold a solid lead. Espriella appears to have consolidated much of the vote that had previously been going to the rightwing senator Paloma Valencia, who at one point polled above 20% and was running in second place but finished Sunday with just 6.9%. Espriella, who calls himself el Tigre (the Tiger), celebrated the result: “Compatriots, defenders of the homeland, more than 10 million Colombians placed their trust in el Tigre and joined the pack ... In 21 days, we are going to change the history of Colombia forever,” he said in a video alongside his wife and children, all wearing shirts of the Colombian national football team. Colombia’s climate crossroads: Trumpism casts shadow over presidential battle Read more Petro posted on X that “as president, I do not accept the preliminary results” released by the National Civil Registry, the independent public body responsible for organising Colombia’s elections. Without showing any evidence, the president claimed the count included “800,000 additional people” and said he would only “consider and accept” the results of the official scrutiny process, during which the National Electoral Council reviews the physical tally sheets, a procedure that can take days or even weeks. The lawyer Juan Carlos Galindo Vácha, who previously headed the National Civil Registry on two occasions, accused Petro of spreading “disinformation”. “Historically, in presidential elections, the difference between the preliminary count, which is unofficial, and the official scrutiny process is less than 1%. That alone undermines any claim by President Petro that there was fraud in the count,” he said in an interview with Radio Ca