Leftwing opponent alleges vote count irregularities after Trump-endorsed lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella secures narrow majority A Trump-admiring far-right millionaire lawyer and s…

Leftwing opponent alleges vote count irregularities after Trump-endorsed lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella secures narrow majority The Trump-admiring far-right millionaire lawyer and self-styled “outsider” Abelardo de la Espriella has won Colombia’s presidential runoff, defeating the leftwing senator Iván Cepeda. With 99.99% of ballots counted in the preliminary vote tally, De la Espriella had secured 12.96m votes, or 49.66%, just 250,830 more than Cepeda, who received 12.7m votes, or 48.7%. A further 1.6% of ballots were cast blank. The margin was narrower than in the first round three weeks ago, when De la Espriella had beaten Cepeda by 673,000 votes. De la Espriella’s victory marks a sharp swing back to the right after four years under Colombia’s first and only leftwing president, Gustavo Petro, who was barred by the constitution from seeking re-election and therefore backed Cepeda as his successor. The result is also being seen as further evidence of a wave of far-right candidates sweeping presidential elections across Latin America, after recent victories by Nasry Asfura in Honduras and José Antonio Kast in Chile, while Keiko Fujimori currently leads the vote count in Peru. Like them, De la Espriella also received the endorsement of the US president, Donald Trump – although only after winning the first round. Trump shared news of the Colombian’s victory in a brief social media post, writing: “He Won, BIG!”. In his victory speech in Barranquilla, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, where his law firm and campaign headquarters are based, De la Espriella promised to respect the constitution.