BOGOTA, Colombia _ Political newcomer Ivan Duque won Colombia's presidency Sunday promising to revitalize the country's economy and save a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
According to initial results, Duque beat Gustavo Petro, the leftist former mayor Bogota, by more than 10 percentage points.
A U.S.-educated lawyer, Duque worked at the International Development Bank in Washington before becoming a Colombian senator in 2014. A virtual unknown just a few years ago, he rose to prominence with the support of former President Alvaro Uribe and his Centro Democratico political party.
During the campaign, critics accused Duque of being Uribe's "puppet" and wanting to destroy the fragile peace deal with FARC. Now, as president, he'll have to assuage those fears and convince critics that Uribe _ who is both popular and polarizing _ will not have undue influence in the new administration.
After casting his ballot, Duque said his election represents a changing of the guard.
"Today, I come to ratify a longing _ that Colombia can be governed by a new generation that wants to govern for and with all Colombians," he said.
With 98 percent of the ballots counted, Duque was winning 54 percent of the vote to Petro's 42 percent, the government said.
Sunday's election was the first time in more than half a century that voters in Colombia chose a president without the threat of the FARC _ once the Western Hemisphere's largest and most violent guerrilla group _ hanging over their heads.
It also is the first time that a woman will hold the job of vice president. Duque's running mate was Marta Lucia Ramirez, a former senator and minister of defense.
Despite some scattered problems, the government said Sunday's vote had been one of the safest and most transparent on record.
After casting his vote Sunday, the current president Juan Manuel Santos _ who has been in office since 2010 but was ineligible to run again _ noted that both Duque and Petro have been vehement critics of his administration. That the opposition candidates, from opposite ends of the political spectrum, were able to run without government interference was a testament to Colombia's democracy, he said.
"Colombia's democracy is working and Colombia's democracy is growing stronger every day," he said.
The new president will have to deal with some complex issues while trying to unite a deeply polarized country. In particular, Duque will have to work to save and reinforce the FARC peace deal.
While the 2016 agreement won Santos a Nobel Prize, and has helped bring down the number of homicides in Colombia, it's far from perfect.
Duque and his mentor, Uribe, had campaigned against the agreement, narrowly defeating it in a national referendum. By their account, the deal let FARC commanders avoid true justice _ allowing them to participate in politics even before they'd served reduced sentences for their crimes. And while Duque says he won't tear up the peace deal, he is a proponent of making significant changes.
"We want peace with justice," Duque said during his campaign "Victims who see that their victimizers have immunity are re-victimized. We need justice that is proportional."
But tinkering with the deal could be a political minefield. Not only might it test the willingness of some former guerillas to continue betting on peace, but it also could put Duque at odds with the international community that rallied around the pact.
Petro, a former M-19 guerrilla who went on to become a crusading senator and the capital's mayor, had been a poster child for rehabilitation. And he argued that the government needed to do more to live up to its end of the bargain, including moving ahead with plans to provide financing and support to former guerrillas and the larger rural community. And _ most critically, he said _ the government needed to stop the ongoing murder of former combatants and rural social leaders.
Another test for the new president will be the nation's ongoing war on drugs. Although the United States has poured billions of dollars into fighting Colombia's coca crops _ the raw ingredient of cocaine _ the problem is as bad as ever.
The country has a record-breaking 695 square miles of its territory dedicated to coca production, the government announced last week. While Santos was hoping the peace deal with the FARC would also help contain the drug trade, it didn't.
And the Trump administration has threatened to cut off drug aid if the country doesn't start showing progress.
Petro advocated new strategies, including treating drug use as a public health issue, and pressing the United States to do more to reduce demand for Colombian cocaine.
Duque, in contrast, is in favor of a more traditional, militarized, approach. On the eve of the election, he reiterated that he will resume aerial spraying of coca crops and believes eradication should be mandatory, not voluntary, as laid out in the peace deal with the FARC.
The new president will also have to deal with an unprecedented influx of Venezuelans, who have poured across the border to escape that nation's economic, political and social troubles.
Colombia estimates that more than 800,000 Venezuelans have entered the country in the past 15 months, straining the health care and education systems.
Colombia's Venezuelan exiles campaigned against Petro _ whom they found too reminiscent of the socialist administration in Caracas. But both Duque and Petro have talked about doing more to help protect and integrate Venezuelans throughout the region.
Duque won points with the diaspora by being more adamant about the need to isolate Venezuela, and he's more likely to follow Washington's calls to crank up sanctions.
While peace, drugs and Venezuela may be priorities for Washington, polls show that they're not the primary concerns for most Colombians. The issues of corruption, unemployment, health care, crime and education topped lists of voter concerns.
Alvaro Enrique Munoz, a 61-year-old retired civil engineer, said Santos had neglected the country's needs as he focused on reaching the peace deal. And he said it seemed like a wasted effort because a faction of the former guerrillas are still running amok in the countryside and coca crops are booming.
"The peace process was a failure," he said. "The whole deal was a lie."
