Colombia Presidential Election Heads to Runoff

Colombia: Colombia's electoral authorities announced Monday that the presidential elections held yesterday, Sunday, will proceed to a runoff later this June.

According to Qatar News Agency, official election data showed that right-wing independent candidate Abelardo de Espreilla will face leftist candidate Senator Ivan Cepeda in a June runoff election after any candidate failed to obtain more than 50 percent of the votes to win in the first round, with nearly 98 percent counted.

The two candidates recorded very close results, with Espreilla winning 44.2 percent of the votes and Ivan Cepeda receiving 41 percent.

Paloma Valencia, the candidate of Colombia's Democratic Center (Centro Democratico) party who presented herself as a centrist candidate, failed to move to the next round by obtaining less than 7% of the votes.