<\/p>\n
Outsider conservative candidate\u00a0Abelardo De la Espriella appears to have won Colombia’s runoff vote on Sunday by a narrow margin. If the count holds up, it represents a significant turn to the right from Colombia’s outgoing current president, Gustavo Petro.<\/p>\n
De la Espriella, known as “El Tigre” (The Tiger), was backed by President Trump and won on a platform of immigration reform, a\u00a0tough stance on crime, and a crackdown on the country’s drug cartels. De la Espriella holds dual Colombian and U.S. citizenship.<\/p>\n
The official count was 49.7 for De la Espriella to 48.7 for his challenger,\u00a0Iv\u00e1n Cepeda, a progressive lawmaker. Cepeda said his campaign considers the vote tally to be “unofficial” and will challenge the results. President Petro said there would be a recount of some ballot stations.<\/p>\n
De la Espriella told thousands of supporters in the northern city of Barranquilla, “I appear before you tonight to announce the most important news of my life: the Colombian people have entrusted me with the supreme honor of serving them as their next president of the Republic of Colombia,\u201d<\/p>\n
He added,\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI will govern for all Colombians \u2026 there will be no retaliation, no persecution, because in a democracy there are no irreconcilable enemies.\u201d<\/p>\n
President\u00a0Trump reportedly spoke with De la Espriella by phone and\u00a0\u00a0posted on\u00a0Truth Social,<\/em>\u00a0“He won, BIG!”<\/p>\n If it holds up, De la Espriella’s victory will mark another victory for conservative candidates in the western half of South America, who have recently\u00a0won a string of victories from Argentina northward to Colombia.<\/p>\n *** Please sign up for\u00a0CBN Newsletters\u00a0to ensure you receive the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.***<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Outsider conservative candidate\u00a0Abelardo De la Espriella appears to have won Colombia’s runoff vote on Sunday by a narrow margin. If the count holds up, it represents a significant turn to the right from Colombia’s outgoing current president, Gustavo Petro. De la Espriella, known as “El Tigre” (The Tiger), was backed by President Trump and won<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[367,4771,2035,1354,9923,1832,7456,9922,2714,2373,438],"class_list":["post-29837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-challenge","tag-colombian","tag-conservative","tag-faces","tag-narrowly","tag-presidential","tag-runoff","tag-tigre","tag-trumpbacked","tag-vote","tag-wins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}