Colombians vote in runoff election expected to trigger shift in decades-long armed conflict

<p>Frontrunner Abelardo de la Espriella has vowed to return to full-scale military confrontation with armed groups</p><ul><li><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/20/colombia-presidential-election-paramilitary-militia-runoff">Ghost of far-right paramilitaries hovers over Colombia’s presidential runoff vote</a></p></li></ul><p>Colombians are going to the polls in a presidential runoff expected to trigger a dramatic shift in the country’s decades-long armed conflict, now at its most violent point since the landmark 2016 peace agreement between the government and most of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).</p><p>Polls show the frontrunner is the Trump-admiring far-right lawyer and millionaire businessman Abelardo de la Espriella, who has vowed to abandon President Gustavo Petro’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/29/colombia-election-total-peace-promise-violence">“total peace” plan</a> of negotiating the disarmament of all criminal organisations and instead return to full-scale military confrontation with armed groups.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/21/colombias-runoff-election-expected-to-trigger-shift-in-decades-long-armed-conflict">Continue reading...</a>