Conservative Ivan Duque was elected on Sunday president of Colombia, sweeping aside leftist Gustavo Petro with 54 percent of votes.
The president-elect vowed to unite his South American nation after a divisive campaign but insisted he would change a landmark peace accord with leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels.
Duque’s decisive victory is likely to reassure investors in Latin America’s fourth-largest economy, but worry Colombians with the pledge to overhaul the FARC accord that ended a five-decade conflict which killed more than 220,000 people and displaced millions.
He has promised to impose tougher punishments on rebels for war crimes.
“With humility and honor, I tell the Colombian people that I will give all my energies to unite our country. No more divisions,” Duque told a crowd of cheering supporters in the capital Bogota. “I will not govern with hatred.”
Duque, 41, the business friendly protégé of hardline former President Alvaro Uribe, has promised to toughen the peace deal while keeping Colombia’s business friendly economic policies intact.
By contrast, former guerrilla Petro had pledged to take on political elites, redistribute land to the poor and gradually eliminate the need for oil and coal in Latin America’s fourth-largest economy. His positions prompted critics to compare him to Venezuela’s former socialist President Hugo Chavez.
“We accept Duque’s triumph. He is the president of the Republic of Colombia... Today we are the opposition to his government,” said Petro.
He also promised to resist any fundamental changes to the peace deal.
"Our role is not to be impotent and watch it being destroyed," he said.
Duque will face significant challenges when he takes office in August. The economy remains weak; drug trafficking gangs have moved into areas once controlled by the FARC and more than half a million Venezuelan migrants have crossed into Colombia, looking for food and work.
His plans to change the peace deal will face considerable opposition in Congress and from Colombia’s Constitutional Court.
On Sunday, he said he would make necessary “corrections” to the accord so victims’ rights receive greater priority and justice and reparations are respected.
FARC leader Rodrigo Londono, known as Timochenko, congratulated Duque on Twitter, calling for reconciliation and saying he respected Colombians’ decision.
FARC disarmed and transformed into a political party after the peace deal.
It did not contest the election and immediately called on Duque to show "good sense" in dealing with the agreement.
"What the country demands is an integral peace, which will lead us to the hoped-for reconciliation," the FARC said in a statement after Duque's win.
The former rebels also called for an early meeting with Duque.
"One of the big questions here is what's going to happen with the peace process," analyst Yann Basset of the University of Rosario told AFP.
"He has said he will not end the agreement, but that he will make modifications, and it's not very clear what these changes will be."
"The biggest challenge will be to adopt a clear position on the peace agreement because, for the moment, we are in limbo," Fabian Acuna, professor of political science at Colombia's Javeriana University, told AFP.
"It will be very costly to go backwards," Acuna warned.
Duque's victory means he will be Colombia's youngest president since 1872.
Duque is the candidate for the Democratic Center Party, a movement started in 2013 by Uribe, seen as the power behind the throne.
A one-term senator, he worked at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington until 2014, when Uribe asked him to return to Colombia and take a seat in Congress. Duque’s running mate, Marta Lucia Ramirez, will be Colombia’s first female vice president.
According to Andres Ortega of National University, Duque will "arrive with a very strong coalition in Congress," where the right swept the polls in March legislative elections.
The FARC withdrew from the presidential elections, having suffered a drubbing in its first electoral contest as a political party in March, polling less than half a percent.
It still gets 10 seats in Congress as a result of the peace agreement -- a clause Duque is intent on scrapping.
