This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Colombia has chosen Iván Duque, a conservative neophyte, to be its next president after a long and divisive campaign that often centred on a controversial peace process with leftist rebels the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

Q&A Why did Colombia need a peace process? Show Hide Conflict Colombia has experienced one of the longest internal conflicts in history. It started in the 1960s following a turbulent period known as 'la violencia'. On the one hand, the Colombian government fought to maintain order and stability, seeking to protect the interests of its citizens and the legitimacy of the state.

On the other, there were guerilla groups – like Farc and ELN – who said they were fighting for the poor and social justice. And then paramilitary groups emerged, claiming they were reacting to the threats from the guerillas while taking justice into their own hands. Impact More than seven million people were uprooted from their homes and driven to cities fearing for their lives. At least two hundred thousand people lost their lives. Numerous human rights violations were committed. Hundreds of people were forcibly recruited and taken far into the Colombian jungle to fight. More than 8,000 cases of child recruitment were recorded. Overall, there have been more than eight million victims, due to the conflict. One out of every five Colombians has been directly affected.

Peace process

After talks lasting more than four years, a peace treaty was signed with Farc in November 2016 effectively bringing the conflict to an end. Key to the agreement are deals on rural development, political participation, illicit drugs and reparations for victims. Farc has given up all of their weapons (verified by the UN) and transitioned into a political party with a voice in the political process. With less money tied up in defence, the country's spending priorities should now be switching to education, health, infrastructure, the economy and the environment. But some are yet to experience 'peace'. Scars are deep. Reconciliation, reintegration and access to opportunities take time. President Juan Manuel Santos is due to stand down in 2018 and some election campaigning has stoked concerns over the peace deal.

Duque, who opposes the peace deal, won in a second round runoff election on Sunday with 53.9% of the vote. His vanquished opponent, Bogotá’s former mayor Gustavo Petro – once a leftist militant himself – defends the peace process.

Despite being the first leftist in the conservative country’s history to come so close to the presidency, he lost on the night, taking 41.8% of the vote.

Many now worry about the fate of the fragile peace deal signed with the Farc in 2016, which formally ended 52 years of civil war that left 220,000 dead and seven million displaced.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest President-elect Iván Duque, centre, greets his supporters as he arrives at his polling station for the second round of presidential elections, in Bogota, Colombia. Photograph: Mauricio Duenas Castaneda/EPA

That deal initially failed to pass a referendum with voters outraged by its guarantees of softer sentencing for rebel leaders and guaranteed seats in congress. It was later amended and ratified by lawmakers, a move some viewed as undemocratic. Sunday gave them another chance to voice their disquiet.

Farc’s wartime leader, Rodrigo Londoño, tweeted after the result: “We have lived the quietest elections of the last decades, the peace process bears fruit. It is a moment of greatness and reconciliation, we respect the decision of the majorities and we congratulate the new president. Now to work, the roads of hope are open.”

Duque promised on the campaign trail to modify the deal’s most contentious components, something that resonated with voters.

On a clear Sunday morning in Bogotá’s central Ciudad Jardín neighbourhood, voters filed into a school repurposed as a voting station when polls opened at 8am. “I am voting for Ívan Duque,” said Marcelo Rodríguez, dressed in a Colombian football shirt. “I want peace but we can’t have it without justice.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gustavo Petro, presidential candidate for Colombia Humana, shows his ballot during the presidential election in Bogota. Photograph: Martin Mejia/AP

Others at the poll station were less convinced. “Amending a deal is the same as tearing it up,” said Andrea Gómez, a student. “Some people in Colombia won’t be happy without war.”

Duque – who will turn 42 just before taking office on 8 August – will be Colombia’s youngest ever president, though his party, Democratic Center, has a coalition in Congress. He also has the backing of several industry leaders and, perhaps most importantly, ex-president Alvaro Uribe, still an immensely powerful – if divisive – figure in Colombian politics.

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Uribe, who dealt severe military blows to the Farc during his tenure from 2002 to 2010, led the campaign against the peace deal in 2016’s referendum. He was Duque’s earliest champion for president, having persuaded his protege to leave a job at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington DC to fill a party senate seat in 2014.

Duque’s opponents say is little more to than Uribe’s puppet, a charge particularly worrying given the hardline svengali’s authoritarian tendencies.

While president, a state intelligence agency was shut down after Uribe used it to spy on the opposition, journalists and members of the supreme court. His military campaign against the rebels was marked by grave human rights abuses: thousands of civilians were murdered in order to falsely inflate combat statistics.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Supporters of Gustavo Petro, presidential candidate for Colombia Humana, console one another as results of the vote count come in. Photograph: Martin Mejia/AP

Both men denied the charge, and accused Petro of being the real threat to democracy. Uribe, after voting in Bogotá’s historic Plaza de Bolívar, said that Duque was the only bulwark against Petro’s “destructive socialism” – the same force he said has mired neighbouring Venezuela in economic and political turmoil.

Petro was reluctant on the campaign trail to distance himself from Venezuela’s late president Hugo Chávez, and with 1 million Venezuelans having fled to Colombia, many here worry that Petro could bring a similar fate.

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Duque’s market-friendly economic policies appealed to voters near the Venezuelan border, though younger and more moderate voters worry about his conservative social policies from drug policy and crime to abortion.

The campaign was long and ugly, with stark polarisation revealed in the first round when Duque and Petro eliminated a handful of more moderate rivals. Now, Duque’s job will be build bridges between Colombians divided on ideology and the peace process, with the worst outcome being another flare up of civil war.

“Polarisation is common in politics around the world,” Pedro Piedrahita Bustamente, a political science professor at the University of Medellín previously told the Guardian. “But here, where there is a history of internal armed conflict, it could be a dangerous thing.”