{"id":212381,"date":"2026-06-01T22:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T22:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/colombias-petro-sows-doubt-about-election-showing-his-favored-successor-heading-to-runoff-against-pro-trump-rival-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T22:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T22:37:08","slug":"colombias-petro-sows-doubt-about-election-showing-his-favored-successor-heading-to-runoff-against-pro-trump-rival-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/colombias-petro-sows-doubt-about-election-showing-his-favored-successor-heading-to-runoff-against-pro-trump-rival-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Colombia\u2019s Petro sows doubt about election showing his favored successor heading to runoff against pro-Trump rival – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Colombia\u2019s outgoing president sowed doubt Sunday about his country\u2019s elections, which showed his preferred candidate, Iv\u00e1n Cepeda, headed to a runoff next month against right-wing opponent Abelardo de la Espriella.
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Neither candidate had more than 50% of the vote in the first round of the election Sunday. With 100% of votes tallied, de la Espriella \u2014 running as a candidate for Defensores de la Patria, a party he founded \u2014 was leading with more than 43% of the vote. Cepeda, of the incumbent party, Pacto Hist\u00f3rico, was trailing at just over 40%.
President Gustavo Petro, who endorsed Cepeda, said he would not accept the preliminary count released by the country\u2019s electoral authority, claiming that some of the software private companies used to count votes was flawed and that the results were not binding.
Petro claimed 800,000 IDs were added to the software, representing people who were not on the official census.
Cepeda, too, sowed doubt about the results, saying that votes were miscounted and that there were discrepancies.
\u201cToday, we secured 10 million votes that were miscounted in Colombia,\u201d Cepeda said in a speech in Bogot\u00e1. \u201cThere is a discrepancy that we wish to verify.\u201d
The country\u2019s electoral body, the National Civil Registry, reveals preliminary results in advance of final, official results. The chief of the office, Hern\u00e1n Penagos, said in March<\/a> that the preliminary count of this year\u2019s congressional elections reached 99.8% precision \u2014 a historic high \u2014 compared with the final results.
Juanita Goebertus, the Americas director of Human Rights Watch, said Sunday on X<\/a> that Colombia\u2019s electoral system was \u201cindependent and trustworthy.\u201d
\u201cIt is regrettable that the president is sowing unjustified doubts,\u201d Goebertus wrote.
\u201cDe la Espriella and Cepeda will proceed to the second round. The election results must be respected,\u201d she added, calling on the international community to rally around the National Civil Registry.
Sunday\u2019s results set the stage for a showdown between Cepeda, a left-wing senator who helped negotiate Colombia\u2019s historic 2016 peace deal, and de la Espriella, a lawyer and political outsider who has positioned himself as an ally to U.S. President Donald Trump and has vowed to crack down on crime.
\u201cWe will defeat tyranny and absolutism,\u201d de la Espriella wrote on X<\/a> after it became clear he would advance to the June runoff.
\u201cWe made it to the runoff thanks to the more than 10 million Colombians who answered to the roar,\u201d said de la Espriella, who often refers to himself as \u201cThe Tiger.\u201d
The runoff is scheduled for June 21.
Paloma Valencia, a candidate for the conservative Centro Democr\u00e1tico party who was a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of right-wing former Colombian President \u00c1lvaro Uribe and pitched herself as a centrist who could build coalitions, was forecast as a candidate who could advance to the second round. But she had less than 7% of the vote Sunday, knocking her out of the race.
Voters for Valencia \u2014 who ran in opposition to the term-limited Petro\u2019s left-wing mandate \u2014 could support de la Espriella in the upcoming round that will decide the next leader of the country. Valencia endorsed de la Espriella at a news conference Sunday following the results.
Sunday\u2019s vote, seen as a referendum on Petro\u2019s policies, comes 10 years after Colombia signed a historic peace pact with guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
That agreement offered hope of breaking the country\u2019s vicious cycle of fighting between rebel groups and the government, but violence has roared back since then, coming to a head in the lead-up to the presidential election.
Criminal groups have increasingly launched drone strikes and armed attacks have plagued the race, and last June, politician and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay, 39, was fatally shot at a political rally.
Petro, a former Marxist revolutionary and the country\u2019s first leftist president of the modern era, has often feuded with Trump \u2014 and used those conflicts to build up his image.
In February, however, the two leaders appeared to make peace <\/a>during a closed-door Oval Office meeting, after which Petro left the White House with a red \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d baseball cap and a signed copy of Trump\u2019s book \u201cThe Art of the Deal.\u201d
Trump said he and Petro \u201cgot along very well\u201d after the meeting.
But some U.S. officials have made moves to spotlight de la Espriella and suggested that voting for Cepeda could be a mistake.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, who has become a key voice<\/a> in advising Trump\u2019s policy toward Colombia and was at Petro and Trump\u2019s February meeting, said at an event at the Atlantic Council last week that Colombia\u2019s elections would be pivotal and would determine \u201cwhere the people are going to decide which way they\u2019re going to go.\u201d
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen one way, and we just had to take military action in Venezuela to fix that,\u201d Moreno said.
Moreno said he would be an international observer for the elections this week to ensure a free and safe election.
Petro reacted to Moreno\u2019s words on X last week<\/a>, asking him not to make comments \u201cdifferent from those pertaining to his mission of electoral oversight.\u201d
\u201cPolitical statements about the citizenry\u2019s vote are illegal interference in the free decision of the people,\u201d Petro said.
Other U.S. lawmakers weighed in ahead of the election, too. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., officially endorsed de la Espriella in the lead-up to the election.
Salazar<\/a>, Moreno and other lawmakers, including Rep. Carlos Gim\u00e9nez<\/a>, R-Fla., congratulated de la Espriella for leading the polls Sunday after results came in.
\u201cDemocracy won today, but the work isn\u2019t done yet. There\u2019s a runoff in three weeks, and, at the request of the CNE, I\u2019ll be back to observe the final round,\u201d Moreno wrote on X<\/a>.
Raquel Coronell Uribe is a breaking news reporter.\u00a0
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeColombia\u2019s outgoing president sowed doubt Sunday about his country\u2019s elections, which showed his preferred candidate, Iv\u00e1n Cepeda, headed to a runoff next month against right-wing opponent Abelardo de la Espriella.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Neither candidate had more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":212382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-212381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}