The WSJ reports,"Óscar Iván Zuluaga, a conservative candidate closely allied with former President Álvaro Uribe, won the most votes in the first round of Sunday's presidential election with a campaign that criticized President Juan Manuel Santos's efforts to negotiate peace with Marxist guerrillas.
Mr. Zuluaga took 29.3% of the vote, or more than 3.7 million votes, to the president's 25.6%, or 3.3 million, the country's electoral authorities said, with nearly 100% of the votes counted. Mr. Zuluaga didn't capture the 50% needed to win outright, but he and Mr. Santos emerged from a field of five candidates and will go head-to-head in a second round on June 15.
In a speech before overjoyed supporters Sunday night, Mr. Zuluaga thanked Mr. Uribe, his mentor and partner in his fight against Mr. Santos, and suggested the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, would face a government that would give them no slack should he win the presidency.
"The president of the republic shouldn't be, can't be, manipulated by the FARC," Mr. Zuluaga said.
Mr. Santos, speaking at the same time from his campaign headquarters, told supporters that peace in this country of 47 million people hinges on his victory in the runoff.
"We all share the same dream," the 62-year-old economist and close ally of the Obama administration told the crowd at his campaign headquarters. "Peace unites us."
Absenteeism reached about 60% in what analysts called a sign of voter disgust with a campaign in which Mr. Zuluaga and Mr. Santos cast dirt at each other but offered few policy details. The other three candidates were a former defense minister, Martha Lucia Ramirez ; Clara Lopez from the leftist Democratic Pole party and Enrique Peñalosa, a former Bogotá mayor well known abroad for his urban-development schemes.
The results underscored the effectiveness that Mr. Zuluaga, a 55-year-old former finance minister, had in capitalizing on voter fatigue with the government's peace negotiations with the FARC, a rebel organization despised by many Colombians for its attacks on civilians and kidnappings.
A government team and rebel commanders have been negotiating in Cuba for 18 months, reaching agreement on three of five points in a framework that, once completed, would end a 50-year conflict. The two sides so far have agreed on development for the countryside, the creation of a political movement for FARC members and, most significantly for the U.S., working in tandem to fight cocaine trafficking. The U.S. since 2000 has provided more than $10 billion in mostly military and antinarcotics aid to fight drugs and weaken the rebels.
But Mr. Zuluaga and Mr. Uribe, who remains popular here for having eroded the guerrilla's power in two terms as president, characterized Mr. Santos as soft on the rebels. The two men have been particularly critical of Mr. Santos's plan to permit the FARC to form a political party, charging that guerrilla commanders would soon be legislating in congress instead of serving jail time for committing atrocities.
"If the president allows impunity for those who commit atrocities and crimes against humanity, then the message that will be transmitted is that it's the same to be honest as it is to be a criminal," Mr. Zuluaga said in his Sunday speech.
Analysts say the results Sunday could have a big impact on the peace talks. Mr. Zuluaga hasn't rejected negotiations with the FARC, but has suggested that they should take place on the condition that the guerrillas unilaterally end military operations".
