Right wing candidate Ivan Duque looks set to win Colombia’s presidential run-off on June 17, two polls published on Friday indicated, as he held on to his long-running lead over leftist Gustavo Petro.
On Sunday, Colombians will head to the polls to elect a new president. At play in this year’s election are a range of issues: Venezuelan migration, economic situation, rampant corruption, high levels of inequality, but above all is the country's historic peace accord that ended over half a century of armed conflict.
Right-wing candidate Ivan Duque and leftist Gustavo Petro will lead their respective coalitions in Colombia’s May presidential election after winning primaries on Sunday. Duque, a protégé of former President Alvaro Uribe and the standard bearer for the Democratic Center party, beat fellow candidates Marta Lucia Ramirez and Alejandro Ordonez for his coalition’s nomination. He got more than 3.9 million votes and 96% of the votes counted.
Colombia's Democratic Center party founded by former president Alvaro Uribe criticized on Sunday The New York Times for a recent editorial accusing the ex head of government of blocking the peace process in the country and calling on him to act as a true statesman. The party said that the NYT editorial constitutes an offence to the millions of Colombians who voted against the terms of the peace accord between the government and the main guerrilla group, FARC.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said Wednesday peace with the FARC rebels is “close,” but his top opponent demanded an overhaul of a “weak” deal rejected by voters in a referendum.
Colombia's president tried Monday to keep alive an agreement to end Latin America's longest-running war after a shocking rejection by voters, but his opponents made clear their price for joining the effort will be steep.
Colombian voters appeared to have shocked their government, world leaders and pollsters by blasting away its hopes for a historic peace deal with the Marxist FARC rebels on Sunday, near-complete referendum results showed. Reversing the trend of earlier opinion polls, voters appeared to have narrowly defied the government's pleas to ratify its plan to put 52 years of bloody conflict behind them within months.
Two public opinion polls released on Wednesday indicate that the recently peace deal between the government with the FARC is likely to be ratified by Colombia’s electorate on Sunday. President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC leader “Timochenko” signed peace on Monday, but before this agreement can be fully ratified, Colombians will vote on the deal in a referendum first.
As thousands of Colombians offered both hope and skepticism, the government of Colombia and FARC Marxist rebels who fought a bitter civil war for more than half a century signed a historic peace accord on Monday, closing the Western Hemisphere's longest armed conflict. The deal will have a first test next Sunday when the Colombian people will vote on a referendum.
After sealing a historic peace accord with the FARC rebels, the Colombian government launched a campaign on Thursday to persuade voters to adopt it in a referendum on October 2.