BOGOTA, Colombia — Juan Manuel Santos convincingly won re-election Sunday after Colombia’s tightest presidential contest in years, an endorsement of his 18-month-old peace talks to end the Western Hemisphere’s longest-running conflict.
Santos defeated right-wing challenger Oscar Ivan Zuluaga with 53 percent to 47 percent of valid votes with 99.9 percent of precincts reporting.
Zuluaga was backed by former two-term President Alvaro Uribe, who many considered the true challenger.
They accused Santos of selling Colombia out in slow-slogging Cuba-based negotiations, and insisted Zuluaga would halt the talks unless the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, ceased all hostilities and some of its leaders accepted jail time.
The outcome affirmed Santos’ claim to be steering Colombia to a historic crossroads after a crippling conflict that has claimed more than 200,000 lives, mostly civilians.
“This is the end of more than 50 years of violence in our country and it is the beginning of a Colombia with more justice and social inclusion,” Santos told cheering supporters in his victory speech. He vowed to “dedicate all my energies and all the energies of my government” to sealing an accord.
He flashed his palm emblazoned with the word “Paz,” or peace — his campaign slogan. Many in the crowd also had the word written on their palms.
A FARC spokeswoman in Havana said the rebels had no comment on the election’s results.
The campaign was Andean nation’s dirtiest in years, and Uribe alleged widespread vote-buying by the Santos camp right up to the closing of polls. Zuluaga nevertheless graciously conceded shortly after the result became known. Uribe didn’t put in an appearance at his campaign headquarters.
Santos’ win was a comeback of sorts — Zuluaga beat him in the first round of five candidates May 25. His 900,000-vote victory hinged in large part on winning Bogota and making major gains on the Caribbean coast, where his party machinery was strong.
In the first round, Santos finished third in the capital, stronghold of defeated leftist candidate Clara Lopez, who endorsed him in the runoff.
Voter turnout rose somewhat, too, from 40 percent in the first round to 48 percent Sunday, and was seen as favoring Santos.
The University of Kansas-educated incumbent got the backing last week of 80 top business leaders and announced exploratory talks with the National Liberation Army, Colombia’s other, far smaller rebel band.
Uribe had accused Santos, grandnephew of a president from a blue-blood Bogota newspaper clan, of offering impunity to the rebels.
Bogota industrial designer Felipe Quintero said he voted for Zuluaga, a previously little-known finance minister during Uribe’s administration, because Santos was conceding too much to rebels.
“They need to be punished, not to be rewarded with liberty” and seats in Congress, Quintero said.
Santos, 62, denies he will let war criminals go unpunished.
And he is no dove. As Uribe’s defense minister and then president, he wielded Colombia’s U.S.-backed military to badly weaken the FARC, including killing its top three leaders.
Analyst Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America called the election less a vote on the peace process than “a referendum on Alvaro Uribe and his role in Colombian society.”
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