News / Colombia

Colombians to vote in presidential election runoff

Sunday, 17 June 2018 9:26 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 17 June 2018 10:12 AM ]

The two candidates in Colombia’s runoff presidential election on June 17, 2018: Ivan Duque, the right-wing candidate (L), and Gustavo Petro of the left wing. (File combo image)

Colombians are to take to the polls on Sunday to elect their next president who will, in turn, determine the fate of a 2016 peace deal between the Bogota government and the FARC guerrilla group.

More than 36 million voters can cast their votes at 10,000 polling stations to choose a president between Ivan Duque, the right-wing candidate of the Democratic Center Party, and Gustavo Petro of the left wing.

It is predicted the voting will last for eight hours and the results will be released on Sunday night.

In the first round of the election, Duque claimed 39.13 percent of the votes, about 14 percentage points higher than Petro’s.

PressTV-Colombia’s presidential election heads to runoff

The presidential election in Colombia goes to a runoff as none of the candidates succeeds in securing an outright majority in the first round.

Business-friendly Duque, 41, who is a protégé of former president Alvaro Uribe, who himself opposes the peace deal with FARC, has said that he will continue to promote peace talks with the second rebel group in the country, the National Liberation Army, if elected, but he advocates some adjustment to the key clauses of the deal with the FARC.

Petro, 48, a leftist from the Progressive Movement, comes from poor origins and has a history of militancy. But he has been far more supportive of the FARC deal than his rival.

Petro has also pledged to overhaul Colombia’s capitalistic economic policy and redistribute wealth.

Future success with the FARC deal, which ended decades of violence, will depend greatly on who wins the election.

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