Gustavo Petro achieved first place in the first presidential round in Colombia. He will go to the second round with Rodolfo Hernández, surprising second place who unseated the right-wing “Fico” Gutiérrez.
With 99% of the votes counted, Gustavo Petro and the surprising second place Rodolfo Hernandez They will dispute the second round of the presidential election in Colombia.
The polling stations closed at 4:00 p.m. local time (5:00 p.m. in Chile) this Sunday following eight hours of voting by the first round of the presidential electionsa day that passed without major incidents.
Throughout the country, 102,152 polling stations were installed in 12,263 positions so that Colombians might elect the president for the period 2022-2026, a definition that will go to a second round on June 19. This is because no candidate today obtained half plus one of the necessary votes.
A total of six candidates presented themselves in these presidential elections, of which the favorite in the polls was the leftist Gustavo Petro, of the Historical Pact; followed by the right Federico “Fico” Gutierrez, Team for Colombia Fico; and by the independent populist Rodolfo Hernandezof the Anti-Corruption Governors League.
The other three were Sergio Fajardo, from the Centro Esperanza coalition; evangelical preacher and senator John Milton Rodriguez, of Free Fair Colombia; and the conservative lawyer Enrique Gomez Martinezof National Salvation.
With 99.16% of the countPetro obtains 8,479,095 votes in his third presidential aspiration, equivalent to 40.31%, but insufficient to win the Presidency in the first roundwhich was the objective this Sunday of his coalition.
His rival in three weeks will be Hernández, a 77-year-old engineer and former mayor of Bucaramanga, the country’s fifth largest city, who was launched as an independent by the League of Anticorruption Governors, a movement created by him to suit him and with which he obtained today 5,931,722 votes, which represent 28.20%.
Hernández ousted the right-wing “Fico” Gutiérrez from second place, the great loser who failed to gather around his name the flow of votes from the right that has historically governed the country.
According to the assessment made shortly before the close by the Minister of Defense, Diego Molano, the day passed with total normality, even in the cybernetic part, “without any incident that might affect” the development of the elections.
