Bogota: Former guerrilla Gustavo Petro was elected the first ever left-wing president of Colombia on Sunday, after beating millionaire businessman Rodolfo Hernandez in a tense and unpredictable runoff election. With 99.99% of polling stations having reported, Petro, candidate of the leftist Historic Pact for Colombia coalition, obtained 11,280,694 votes, or 50.44%, while Hernandez gained 10,579,803 votes, or 47.31%.
Petro, a former member of the M-19 guerrilla movement, ran on a radical manifesto and pledged during the campaign to fight inequality by providing free university education, pension reforms and high taxes on unproductive land. He has also pledged to fully implement a 2016 peace deal that ended a 50-year long conflict with the communist guerrilla group, Farc, and to seek negotiations with the still-active ELN rebels. He will take office as president on Aug. 7. His running mate Francia Marquez, a single mother and former housekeeper, will become the country’s first black woman vice-president.
The 62-year-old former mayor of Bogota tweeted after the election win , saying this is a day of ‘celebration’. ‘Let’s celebrate the first popular victory,” Petro wrote. “This victory is for God, and for the people, and its history. Today is the day of the streets and squares’, the tweet read. President Ivan Duque tweeted that he had contacted Petro to congratulate him.
The campaign marked Mr Petro’s third run for the presidency. He finished fourth in 2010, and was comfortably defeated in a run-off by Mr Duque in 2018. Electoral officials had previously said that the voting process was progressing normally during the voting day, but it was later reported that one soldier and one electoral witness have been killed. Defense Minister Diego Molano said that one soldier was killed in an attack by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. He also said that the killing of an electoral volunteer in Guapi, Cauca department, was under investigation.
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