Sawt Falasteen - Trump-backed hardliner faces leftist senator as Colombia votes

Around 41 million voters are choosing between flamboyant hard-right White House-backed lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella and stoic left-wing Senator Ivan Cepeda.

Security dominated a fractious campaign that was marred by guerrilla bomb attacks, hundreds of threats against candidates and the murder of a leading conservative presidential hopeful.

"I have to say, there is a certain fear," 59-year-old Alex Vizcaino told AFP, while voting in the Caribbean city of Barranquilla.

"There are a lot of fanatics. You see a lot of violence," he said. "I think everyone's hope, regardless of political color, is that things change."

A decade after a landmark peace deal ended the conflict with FARC guerrillas that killed a quarter of a million people, much of Colombia is at peace and prospering.

But cartels and dissident guerrilla groups still control pockets of the country and cocaine exports are at an all-time high.

De la Espriella, a dual US-Colombian national who calls himself "The Tiger," won May's first-round vote promising to wage war on groups who refused to sign the accord.

He has won US President Donald Trump's "complete and total endorsement" and hopes to ride a right-wing wave that has swept rightist candidates to power in Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Honduras.

"Today, democracy wins!" De la Espriella said as he voted, decked in Colombia football jersey and surrounded by a crowd of hundreds who sang the national anthem.

During the campaign, the 47-year-old told AFP that if elected, he would end sputtering peace talks with dissident groups and launch a 90-day campaign of US-backed airstrikes against them.

He advocates the right to carry arms, construction of mega-prisons, fracking, cutting the size of the state and has said that it would be "ideal" to dollarize Colombia's economy.

Cepeda, by contrast, is a 63-year-old philosopher-turned-senator and human rights defender who has been a key figure behind the peace talks.

He is the son of a communist senator killed by right-wing paramilitaries and is the political heir to outgoing President Gustavo Petro, who is constitutionally barred from re-election.

Critics say Petro's leftist government has allowed Colombia's cartels and guerrilla organizations to grow richer from trafficking, expand their territory and gain power.

Cepeda recently told AFP that he would "take stock" of peace talks and "make the necessary changes." He has long favored dialogue over an iron fist security approach.

Cepeda's support comes mainly from progressives and the poor -- who have benefited from a drop in poverty, higher wages and unemployment in what is still one of the most economically unequal countries in the world.

- Changing of the guard -

The first round of voting showed Colombians racing to the political extremes and a total collapse of the political center and the traditional right, which has run the country for much of the last two centuries.

During that vote, De la Espriella garnered 44 percent of the vote, against Cepeda's 41 percent, with neither getting the majority needed to avoid Sunday's runoff.

Colombia has long been the United States' closest partner in South America, pouring billions of dollars into the country's military and intelligence services.

Trump has suggested that may change if "radical left Marxist" Cepeda wins.

But in Bogota, some in the military and foreign diplomats have expressed fears that a return to hardline security policies could provoke reprisal attacks and return the country to a spiral of violence.

S.AbuJamous--SF-PST