Colombia’s runoff election expected to trigger shift in decades-long armed conflict

De la Espriella says he will abandon President Gustavo Petro’s ‘total peace’ plan of negotiating the disarmament of all criminal organisations. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images View image in fullscreen De la Espriella says he will abandon President Gustavo Petro’s ‘total peace’ plan of negotiating the disarmament of all criminal organisations. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images Colombia’s runoff election expected to trigger shift in decades-long armed conflict Frontrunner Abelardo de la Espriella has vowed to return to full-scale military confrontation with armed groups Colombians go to the polls on Sunday in a presidential runoff expected to trigger to a dramatic shift in the country’s decades-long armed conflict, now at its most violent point since the landmark 2016 peace agreement between the government and most of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). Polls show the frontrunner is the Trump-admiring far-right lawyer and millionaire businessman Abelardo de la Espriella, who has vowed to abandon President Gustavo Petro’s “total peace” plan of negotiating the disarmament of all criminal organisations and instead return to full-scale military confrontation with armed groups. De la Espriella’s opponent in the ballot will be Petro’s chosen successor and the main architect of “total peace”, the leftwing senator Iván Cepeda, who argues for the continuation of the plan, with “necessary changes” . Cepeda led the polls throughout most of the campaign but was defeated in the first round three weeks ago and has since struggled to attract centrist voters. Colombian far-right candidate is latest Trumpian figure in Latin America to ride anti-incumbent wave Read more The election, in which more than 41 million Colombians are eligible to vote, is expected to deliver another victory for a far-right candidate advocating an iron-fist approach to crime, after the examples of Keiko Fujimori, who is leading the vote count in Peru , and José Antonio Kast, who won last year’s election in Chile . Amid what many analysts see as a new wave of far-right victories across Latin America, a De la Espriella presidency would leave only Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay and Guatemala under leftwing governments. Sandra Borda Guzmán, an associate professor of political science at Los Andes University in Bogotá, said De la Espriella successfully tapped into two trends that have shaped recent elections around the world: presenting himself as an anti-establishment “outsider” and promising quick solutions to violence. He even promised that, if elected, he would restore state control over territories dominated by criminal groups within 90 days – although he later appeared to backtrack , telling Radio Caracol: “I never said I would solve the security problem in 90 days.” View image in fullscreen De la Espriella’s opponent, Iván Cepeda, was leading in the polls until a few weeks ago. Photograph: Sebastian Barros/NurPhoto/Shutterstock De la Espriella, a lawyer who launched his legal care