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

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. …