Colombia’s top vote-getter will face runoff election

Associated Press

BOGOTA, Colombia

A conservative former defense minister who promises to build on Alvaro Uribe’s security gains easily defeated a maverick outsider in Colombia’s election Sunday but fell short of the votes needed to avoid a presidential runoff.

Juan Manuel Santos, a political veteran who says he’ll continue President Uribe’s popular pro-Washington policies, won 47 percent support against 21 percent for Antanas Mockus, a mathematician who pledged clean government as the Green Party candidate.

Santos, 58, needed a simple majority — 50 percent plus 1 — to avoid a June 20 runoff. He won in all but one of Colombia’s provinces and even took Bogota, considered a stronghold of Mockus, who twice served as the capital’s mayor.

Uribe was barred by a February court ruling from running for a third straight term.

Sunday was marked by nearly two dozen clashes with leftist rebels that claimed the lives of at least three soldiers, a potent reminder that Colombia’s half-century-old conflict is far from resolved.

Sunday’s ballot testifies to the splintering of Colombia’s political landscape during the Uribe era.

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