In a six-candidate field, Santos won 46.5 percent of the ballots in Sunday’s first round vote compared to just 21.5 percent for Mockus. However, Santos is not yet Colombia’s president-elect because he came up just short of the 50 percent plus one vote required for outright victory.
First-round losers sometimes stage comebacks. Andres Pastrana lost to Horacio Serpa in Colombia’s 1998 first-round vote but prevailed in the runoff. Peruvian President Alan Garcia pulled off the same trick in 2006.
But given the lopsided vote tally on Sunday hardly anyone thinks Mockus, the opposition Green Party candidate, stands a chance against Santos, a former defense minister who is backed by outgoing President Alvaro Uribe as well Colombia’s biggest political parties.
Even if Mockus, a former Bogota mayor and the son of Lithuanian immigrants, doubles his 3.1 million vote tally from Round One, he would still lose.
Runoffs are all about forming alliances with rival political parties anxious to climb aboard the victory train. The Liberal and Conservative parties, which fielded their own losing candidates on Sunday but maintain formidable get-out-the-vote machinery, have thrown their weight behind Santos.
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