Conservative Duque wins Colombian presidency

Bogata, June 18 

Conservative Ivan Duque won Colombia’s presidential election today after a campaign that turned into a referendum on a landmark 2016 peace deal with FARC rebels that he pledged to overhaul.

Duque, 41, polled just over 54 per cent to his leftist rival Gustavo Petro’s 41.7 per  cent with 97 per cent of the vote counted, electoral authority figures showed. Petro, a leftist former mayor and ex-guerrilla, supports the deal.

“These are momentous elections,” President Juan Manuel Santos, who will step down in August, said as he cast his ballot early in the day.

“Let us continue to build a country at peace, a country of democracy, a country which we all hold dear and to which we all contribute.” His efforts to end the war with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) brought him the Nobel Peace Prize, though he is leaving office with record unpopularity in a country of 49 million people.

The world’s leading producer of cocaine, the Latin American country continues to battle armed groups vying for control of lucrative narco-trafficking routes in areas FARC once dominated.

Duque’s victory means he will be Colombia’s youngest president since 1872, during his swearing-in ceremony in August. He comfortably won the first round last month, having campaigned on a pledge to rewrite the agreement signed by Santos.

The former economist and first-term senator says he wants to keep ex-FARC rebels from serving in Congress. The agreement allowed the group to transform itself into a political party. — AFP

FARC deal at risk

• President-elect Ivan Duque says he would revise landmark 2016 peace deal with FARC rebels in order to sentence guerrilla leaders guilty of serious crimes to “proportional penalties.” He said he wanted to make sure that those who commit crimes “pay for them.”