Image copyright AFP Image caption Mr Duque, 41, has taken a hard line against former guerrillas

Colombia is heading for a run-off in its presidential election after no candidate achieved 50% of the vote in Sunday's first round.

With nearly all ballots counted in Sunday's first round, conservative Ivan Duque was leading with 39.7% ahead of left-wing rival Gustavo Petro on 24.8%.

It is the first election since the government signed a peace agreement with the Farc rebel group in 2016.

The deal has polarised political opinion across the country.

Mr Duque has opposed the peace deal, saying it is too lenient on the Farc. But Mr Petro, an ex-guerrilla and former Bogota mayor, supports the accord.

Incumbent President Juan Manuel Santos cannot stand again, after serving two terms.

Peace deal hangs in balance

Analysis by BBC South America correspondent Katy Watson

The results of this first round sum up the political scenario in Colombia - a society that is deeply polarised.

Ivan Duque is a man who represents traditional politics. He has publicly criticised the peace deal agreed with the former Farc rebels, striking a chord with many conservative voters.

But in the second round, he will go head to head with a man on the other end of the political spectrum. Gustavo Petro is a former member of the M19 rebel group who has made inequality and corruption priorities in this campaign.

He has pushed for radical economic policies and a redistribution of wealth and he has also been far more supportive of the peace deal. The ultimate success of that agreement will depend greatly on who wins next month.

Why are there questions over the peace deal?

President Santos, a centre-right politician, sought to end the decades-long conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), the country's main guerrilla group.

Image copyright AFP Image caption Duque supporters are jubilant

The peace deal he signed in 2016 was reached after years of negotiations but it was regarded as too lenient by many voters and rejected in a referendum.

A revised accord was approved by Congress later that year.

Mr Duque has promised to reverse some of the provisions of the deal if he becomes president.

He is an ally of former President Alvaro Uribe, who led the campaign against the agreement.

Who is Gustavo Petro?

Mr Petro, who backs the deal, would be Colombia's first-ever left-wing president if he is elected.

In the 1980s he was a member of the M-19 rebel group, which disbanded itself in 1990 to become a political party.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Mr Petro, 58, is popular with the poor and the young, and campaigned against corruption

Correspondents say that with the main civil conflict over, voters are much more worried about economic issues.

The candidates have mainly campaigned on issues such as inequality, unemployment, housing and corruption.

Also standing in the election were:

Sergio Fajardo, a left-leaning former mayor of the city of Medellin

German Vargas Lleras, a former housing minister

Humberto de la Calle, a government peace negotiator

About 100 international observers monitored the election.</s>Colombia’s presidential election on May 27 is the first since the government signed a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia leading to the disarmament of some 7,000 fighters.</s>BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Colombia's presidential election on May 27 is the first since the government signed a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia leading to the disarmament of some 7,000 fighters. Five candidates are running and if none gets more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two finishers will head to a runoff in June. Here's a glance at who's running and what's at stake:

Polls indicate that the two leading candidates are Gustavo Petro, a leftist running on an anti-establishment platform, and Ivan Duque, a conservative lawyer and former senator who has promised to change some provisions of the 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

Duque has aligned himself with U.S. drug policy, promising to resume a controversial program of spraying coca fields with herbicide that President Juan Manuel Santos ended over health concerns. A former bureaucrat at the Inter-American Development Bank, Duque lived in the U.S. for more than a decade. He promises to stimulate the economy by decreasing taxes on businesses and boosting oil production. His critics point out that the 41-year-old has almost no managerial experience.

Petro was a member of the disbanded M-19 guerrilla movement in his youth and later was elected to the Senate, where he led corruption investigations into the links between right-wing paramilitary groups and regional political dynasties. He also served as mayor of Bogota, but was removed in what he says were politically motivated disciplinary actions related to his overhaul of the city's garbage collection system. Petro's critics accuse him of being a populist, pointing to his past support for Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.

Besides Petro and Duque, ex-Vice President German Vargas and ex-Medellin Mayor Sergio Fajardo are also running as centrists hoping to beat one of the front-runners and force a runoff. Both candidates promise to implement market friendly economic policies. Trailing farther behind in the polls is Humberto de la Calle, who was the government's chief negotiator in the peace talks.

Colombia's next president will have to oversee the implementation of the peace deal, ensuring that former guerrilla fighters are able to participate in politics and integrate into civilian life. That is already proving to be a challenge as some former FARC fighters have formed dissident groups or joined criminal gangs that are sowing violence in remote areas.

Colombia's next president will also have to build up the state presence in areas where drug trafficking gangs exert power over farmers and local governments. President Donald Trump has threatened to decertify Colombia as a partner in the war on drugs as coca cultivation has doubled since 2012 and now exceeds 188,000 hectares, according to U.S. estimates

The incoming president will also have to decide if he wants to continue ongoing peace talks with the National Liberation Army, a smaller guerrilla group that is still active in some parts of the country. And the arrival of more than 1 million Venezuelan migrants in the past two years has strained public resources and fueled resentments in Colombia.

Colombia is Latin America's third most populated country, after Brazil and Mexico, and is one of the world's largest exporters of flowers and coffee, though its economy relies largely on oil and mining. It is also Washington's staunchest ally in South America. Despite great strides made in security, it continues to be the world's top cocaine producer.</s>BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - The Latest on Colombia's presidential election (all times local):

Polls in Colombia have closed in a first round of voting for president that drew millions of people to the ballot box.

Voters now await the results in a polarizing contest that pit candidates for and against the nation's peace process against one another.

The race is the first in Colombia's recent history in which candidates rallied voters on issues like the economy instead of how to defeat leftist rebels.

Rebels with the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia signed a contentious peace accord with the government in 2016.

Front-runner conservative Ivan Duque is pledging to make "corrections" to aspects of the accord including to amnesty terms for former guerrillas.

He would need more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a run-off election in June.

For decades, Colombians voted with an eye on the bloody conflict with leftist rebels that dominated their country and politics.

But on Sunday they were casting their ballots in the first presidential election since the signing of a peace accord with the nation's biggest rebel group to end the conflict and were weighing issues like corruption, inequality, crime and relations with their crisis-plagued neighbor Venezuela.

The two leading candidates have presented dramatically different visions for both Colombia's economic model and the future of its divisive peace process in a polarizing campaign driven by a wave of anti-establishment sentiment.

Leading the polls is conservative former senator Ivan Duque, the protege of former President Alvaro Uribe, the chief critic of the peace deal, but surveys suggest he is unlikely to get the more than 50 percent of votes required to avoid a June runoff. He's being chased by Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla and ex-Bogota mayor, whose rise has triggered business concerns he would push Colombia toward the left and rattle markets.</s>Colombia's Presidential Election Moves To A 2nd Round Pitting Right Against Left

Colombia on Sunday held its first presidential election since a landmark peace accord ended a 50-year-old guerrilla war. The battle to lead the country now goes to a runoff next between two ideological opposites and the race is expected to be contentious.

Right-wing candidate Ivan Duque, a former senator, took first place, and will run against leftist Gustavo Petro, a former mayor of Bogota and a one-time rebel. Of the 19 million votes cast, Duque won 39 percent — missing the 50 percent mark needed to avoid a runoff. Petro received 25 percent.

Third-place finisher Sergio Fajardo, got nearly 24 percent of the vote, and his portion is likely to be decisive in the runoff. He has not indicated which candidate he will support.

Duque has had the support of former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who is constitutionally barred from running for a third term. Uribe is immensely popular for ordering devastating military attacks on Colombia's guerrilla groups during his two terms in office.

NPR's John Otis in Bogota reports that, "With Uribe's support, Duque shot to the top of the polls. Critics fear that Duque could become a kind of puppet president with Uribe pulling the strings. But Duque insists he's his own man."

Second-place finisher Petro and his populist "Humane Colombia" platform have drawn comparisons from critics to the late Venezuelan socialist leader Hugo Chavez, who Petro once admired.

The Associated Press reports: Petro describes himself as a "strong adversary" of the neighboring country's current president, Nicolas Maduro, but his early ties to Chavez have dogged him throughout the campaign.

Whoever wins the runoff and becomes president will have a big say in the future of the peace agreement. The accord ended a war that killed 220,000 people and has vastly reduced violence. Petro supports the peace treaty but Duque has promised to rewrite it.

John Otis reports, "Duque claims that it's too lenient on former rebel fighters. For example, those accused of war crimes can avoid prison. And Duque's supporters can't stomach the fact that the treaty has given 10 former guerrillas seats in Colombia's congress."

Ramiro Bejarano, a columnist for El Espectador newspaper, tells The Associated Press that "Duque's 14-point advantage will be hard to surmount for Petro, whose main challenge is to convince voters he won't convert Colombia into another Venezuela."

While most polls have Duque the favorite to win the June 17 runoff, Petro shouldn't be counted out.</s>Colombia held its first presidential elections this past weekend since the end of the country's half-century old guerilla war. Two candidates will now face-off in a run-off election next month.</s>BOGOTA, Colombia — In first round presidential elections Sunday, Colombians are hitting the polls to choose who they want to guide Latin America’s third most populous nation through a troubled moment marked by soaring cocaine production, a shaky peace accord with a Marxist rebel group and the influx of Venezuelan migrants flooding over the border to escape an economic crisis next door.

The conservative 41-year-old lawyer Iván Duque was leading in pre-election polls, followed by the progressive 58-year-old economist and ex-mayor of Bogotá, Gustavo Petro.

Other candidates are a mathematician who was the centrist mayor of Medellín, Sergio Fajardo, and a former vice-president, Germán Vargas Lleras, on the center-right.

No candidate is expected to win outright on Sunday, and there will likely be a run-off, probably involving Duque and Petro. That vote would come June 17, and it would give Colombians a choice between right and left, one they haven’t had for decades.

Colombia is polarized. A 2016 peace accord led to the demobilization of thousands of fighters from the FARC rebel group last year, but while some Colombians want to forgive and move on, others are frustrated, insisting on harsher punishment for FARC leaders than is currently pending.

And a wave of poor Venezuelan migrants crossing illegally into Colombia is challenging an under-employed work force.

In the post-conflict era, the long-time American ally’s security issues are changing. Colombia’s next president will have to deal with a major increase in the amount of land under coca cultivation. After two decades and a U.S. package of over $10 billion in aid to fight against drug-trafficking groups, a smattering of violent, criminal organizations has arisen with the endof the fighting. Peace talks with the ELN, a smaller rebel group, appear fragile.

“If Petro were to win, it could create big problems for Colombia’s relations with the United States, least because I would think Trump’s immediate reaction to Petro would be very negative,” said Philip Paterson, a Latin American analyst at Oxford Analytica. “We might see a lot more frustration between Washington and Bogotá in terms of Washington pushing for coca crop eradication programs – which I think Petro would be far less likely to follow through on, where Duque would do it enthusiastically.”

The issues on voters’ minds reflect a Colombia that more and more resembles its South American neighbors, where ire toward corruption, frustration over access to effective healthcare, and attention to environmental issues are competing with Colombia’s age-old political debates of how to tackle drug-trafficking and stop armed conflict.

For voters, Duque represents a nostalgic return to the hardline security stance of former president Alvaro Uribe. Duque has called for harsher punishments for FARC leaders, who currently face restricted liberties if jurors find they tell the truth in a special tribunal.

He was elected in 2014 as a senator in Uribe’s Centro Democratico party. Before that, he worked at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington.

Duque argues that Colombia’s economy is hamstrung by regulations and taxes on private enterprise. He’s calling for tax cuts and reductions in public spending.

Alexandra de Brigard, a 47-year-old architect, said she supports Duque with the hope that he will restore Colombia to what it was before outgoing President Juan Manuel Santos took office in 2010.

“I’m from the generation that lived a really horrible and violent chapter of Colombia’s history. Uribe saved us when it seemed like we had no hope,” she said.

“Santos did the exact opposite of what he promised, the exact opposite of Uribe,” she added, reflecting many pro-Duque voters’ regret and frustration that the second-term Santos broke the continuity of Uribe’s hardline security policy with FARC.

Victor Manuel Sierra, also 47, says he’s voting for Duque because his 25-employee cable wire business is suffocating under the weight of high taxes.

Detractors insist that behind Duque’s moderate rhetoric are staunch, ultra-conservative sectors backed by regional business elites.

“Duque represents a defense of the status quo,” said Alvaro Villarraga of the Democratic Culture Foundation.

Petro is a former member of a left-wing armed movement known as M-19. He worked for its political wing until it disarmed in 1991 as part of a peace process.

Elected to the senate, Petro gained a reputation for exposing corruption. In 2011, he was elected as mayor of Bogotá.

Petro wants to dismantle Colombia’s mining and oil sector and replace it with renewables, as well as strengthening the agricultural sector – where many of the rural poor are employed.

Petro has said he’d buy land if landowners won’t pay his proposed higher taxes on under-used property. His opponents cry expropriations, equating him with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

“He’s talked about wanting to wind down coal and oil in three years, which I think is extremely ambitious and unlikely to happen in reality,” says Paterson. “I certainly don’t think he would be hostile to business. He’d still be trying to encourage international private investment into Colombia.

“This idea that he’s the ‘New Chavez’ is way off the mark.”

His supporters see the upside to a leader with leftist sympathies who presents himself as an outsider. “I like Petro for his ideas: his defense of the environment, and offering free higher education,” says 34-year-old political scientist Andrés Ignacio Sánchez, who is currently unemployed.

“Forever now he’s gone against institutions and the way they currently work.”

For decades, Colombia battled leftist guerrillas. Now one is a leading presidential candidate.

He was linked to war crimes. Now he’s Colombia’s ambassador in Seoul.

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news</s>Colombia's presidential election: another referendum on the peace deal?

On Sunday, Colombians will head to the polls to elect a new president. At play in this year’s election are a range of issues: Venezuelan migration, economic situation, rampant corruption, high levels of inequality, but above all is the country's historic peace accord that ended over half a century of armed conflict.

The election is Colombia’s first since the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (known as the FARC) agreed to the peace deal. Voters won’t only be casting their ballot for a new political leader, but also for a potential new path forward for Colombia and its fledgling peace process.

The two leading candidates have very different views of the deal’s future. On one extreme is Ivan Duque, a right-wing politician favored by former president Alvaro Uribe, who has vowed to make structural modifications to the accord. On the other, leftist candidate Gustavo Petro, a former M-19 guerrilla and mayor of Bogotá, has voiced a desire to push the accord forward, but may lack the political support to do so if elected.

The other presidential hopefuls, Germán Vargas Lleras, Sergio Fajardo and Humberto de la Calle, fall between the two leading candidates.

The latest opinion polls released had Duque with an eleven percentage points ahead of Petro. If no candidate gets a majority of the votes on May 27, a runoff vote will be held between the top two candidates on June 17.

The presidential election, however, is just the first step toward ensuring the peace deal’s success and survival.

“On signing this agreement, as president of all Colombians, I want to invite all, with an open mind and open heart, to give peace a chance,” Santos said at a ceremony in Bogotá on 14 November 2016. A month before, 50.2% of Colombians voted to reject the accord in a referendum.

The accord was slightly amended and it later passed in congress by a vote of 130-0 in the Lower House and 75-0 in the Senate (members of Uribe’s party abstained from the vote.)

 In October 2017, the accord gained legal protection under the law after Colombia’s Constitutional Court ruled that congressional approved legislation related to the peace deal cannot be annulled for twelve years. While this ensures that the accord will exist in some form not just beyond the next three presidents, it does not protect parts of the deal not yet approved by Congress.</s>BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — In a ramshackle house with smog-stained walls in Colombia's capital, the fears and divisions arising from the country's first presidential election since the signing of a historic peace accord are palpable.

On one side of the tenement's open patio, Ivan Martinez has plastered images of bespectacled leftist candidate Gustavo Petro on walls. Just feet away, Dan Marin has hung up posters of gray-haired front-runner Ivan Duque, a conservative lawyer and protégé of Alvaro Uribe, the influential former president who was the main opponent of the pact that ended decades of conflict between the government and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebels.

One man thinks Petro is the best hope for Colombia to finally root out long-entrenched corruption and inequality. The other fears his election could transform Colombia into another crisis-ridden Venezuela.

"One says, 'I can resolve everything with an avocado,'" says Marin, a 34-year-old artist, alluding to Petro's pledge to grow more avocados and free Colombia from dependence on fossil fuel exports. "The other says, 'No, with oil.'"

Colombian voters head to the polls Sunday after a campaign that has stoked fears on the left and right and once again polarized the nation. Rather than war, for the first time in Colombia's recent history voters are focused on issues like corruption, the economy and their weariness with establishment politicians.

"We're talking about a lot of things that were usually part of bipartisan consensus in Colombia," said Sandra Borda, dean of social sciences at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogota. "Now it's different."

Duque is considered the candidate to beat, but in an unexpected turn, Petro has been chasing his coattails. The 58-year-old former guerrilla and ex-Bogota mayor is promising to overhaul Colombia's economic model, galvanizing the youth vote to place second in most polls. Three more candidates trail close behind and warn a vote for Petro could tilt Colombia dangerously toward the left and rattle markets in one of Latin America's most-conservative nations.

The race will head into what is likely to be a contentious June runoff if no single candidate garners more than 50 percent of the vote.

Petro's populist platform comes at a time when candidates with anti-establishment messages are finding success across Latin America. Mexican leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is casting his third run for the presidency as a historic battle against entrenched elites. In Brazil, candidate Jair Bolsonaro is at the opposite end of the political spectrum but likewise is attacking the traditional political class.

"These are change elections in Latin America," said Michael Shifter, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue.

Colombia has one of the region's highest levels of income inequality, ranking second only to Haiti according to one study, and politicians and armed groups have tried to make that a rallying point at various moments in the nation's history.

Populist firebrand Jorge Eliecer Gaitan was assassinated in 1948 as he ran for president, sparking a political bloodletting known as "La Violencia" or "The Violence" in which tens of thousands died and peasants took up arms, paving the way toward decades of conflict between the army, leftist rebels and paramilitary groups. Later in the 1980s, scores of politicians affiliated with the Patriotic Union, a party aligned with the now disbanded FARC rebels, were gunned down.

"They used to tell people the political left was somehow linked to the illegal armed left," Borda said. "Now that argument doesn't work anymore."

Petro himself has roots in Colombia's armed struggle, joining the M-19 guerrilla movement when he was still a teen. His campaign has taken pains to inform Colombians that he was an urban militant devoted to spreading the group's ideological message of social justice. At the time of M-19's notorious attack on Colombia's Palace of Justice, Petro was behind bars for illegal possession of firearms.

"He didn't fire a single shot," said former rebel Alberto Becera, one of a contingent of ex-combatants now working as a volunteer on Petro's campaign.

Petro describes himself as a "strong adversary" of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose name and socialist policies spark fear in the minds of Colombians who have seen almost 1 million Venezuelans arrive in their country since 2017. On repeated occasions, he's also criticized Venezuela's economic model for its reliance on commodities to fund extensive social programs.

"They've shown that's not sustainable," he said recently in a soft-spoken voice that contrasted with his fiery speeches in plazas around the nation.

He presents his candidacy as a departure from previous generations of Latin American leftists and says he wants to create a knowledge-based economy in Colombia and boost agricultural production with land reform.

Still, controversy over his past support for Venezuela's revolution has hounded him. In 1994, shortly after Hugo Chavez was released from jail after staging a military coup in Venezuela, it was Petro who brought the leftist firebrand to Colombia.

He and Duque differ on almost every single issue: Whereas Duque has proposed reviving Colombia's aerial eradication program to squash a boom in coca production, Petro is against it and instead promotes crop substitution. Duque has discussed the need to "correct" Colombia's divisive 2016 peace accord with now demobilized FARC rebels. Petro supports the accord.

Despite his rise in the polls, many analysts call Petro's proposals impractical and still consider his campaign a longshot. A close friend of Petro who asked not to be identified to protect their relationship said that while his proposals might spark interest, he doubts he could win because he generates too much fear.

And yet, fear lurks over the right of Colombia's political spectrum, too.

Duque's close affiliation with Uribe makes some think that a Duque presidency would in fact be another Uribe presidency. Though widely credited with improving Colombia's security and weakening illegal armed groups, Uribe also presided over a period of grave human rights violations by the military.

When asked recently if he'd be Uribe's puppet, Duque told a local newspaper that the former president would remain a senator leading their party's bloc in congress but added that "working together as a team is good for Colombia."

Meanwhile, Marin and Martinez continue their impassioned dialogue over the campaign at their tenement.

Marin, a former police officer, keeps a bullet proof vest on hand and says he fears traveling around Colombia. He thinks Duque will be tough with criminal groups that still dominate much of the nation's remote, coca-filled countryside.

He said he has relatives in Venezuela and that Petro's rhetoric concerns him. Migrants arriving in Bogota tell him that "the same words Chavez used, Petro is using."

Martinez, whose family was displaced by paramilitary groups decades ago, is so energized by Petro's platform that he recently gathered friends for a celebration to feast on sancocho soup and painted a colorful banner with the name "PETRO."

He hung it up outside and hopes that government officials see it as they pass by in motorcades of dark-colored SUVs in route to the presidential palace.</s>Voting has begun in Colombia's first presidential election since the government signed a peace agreement with the Farc rebel group in 2016.

Incumbent Juan Manuel Santos cannot stand again, after serving two terms.

The main contenders are conservative Ivan Duque, who has opposed the peace deal, and left-winger Gustavo Petro, an ex-guerrilla and former Bogota mayor.

Polls suggest that neither will win 50% of the vote on Sunday and they will face each other in a run-off in June.

President Santos, a centre-right politician, sought to end the decades-long conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), the country's main guerrilla group.

The peace deal he signed in 2016 was reached after years of negotiations. But it was regarded as too lenient by many voters and rejected in a referendum.

A revised accord was approved by Congress later that year.

Mr Duque, who is leading in opinion polls, has promised to reverse some of the provisions of the deal if he becomes president.

He is an ally of former President Alvaro Uribe, who led the campaign against the agreement.

Mr Petro, who backs the deal, would be Colombia's first-ever left-wing president if he is elected.

In the 1980s he was a member of the M-19 rebel group, which disbanded itself in 1990 to become a political party.

Correspondents say that with the main civil conflict over, voters are much more worried about economic issues.

The candidates have mainly campaigned on issues such as inequality, unemployment, housing and corruption.

Also standing in the election are:
• Sergio Fajardo, a left-leaning former mayor of the city of Medellin

About 100 international observers are monitoring the elections.
Voters in Colombia go to the polls in the first round of a presidential election.