Bogota.- Abelardo de la Espriella affirmed this Sunday that he spoke with the president of the United States, Donald Trump, who, he said, recognized his victory in the second round of the presidential elections in Colombia in which the preliminary count indicates that he won by a narrow margin over the leftist Iván Cepeda.
“I spoke a few minutes ago with the president of the United States, President Donald Trump, and he has expressed his support and recognition of our victory,” De la Espriella said in a live broadcast of his team.
Also, he assured, the chief of staff of the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and other representatives of the “democracies of the world” called him to congratulate him.
In this Sunday’s elections, with 99.98% of the polling stations informed in the preliminary count, De la Espriella, of the Defenders of the Homeland movement, obtained 12.9 million votes (49.66%) and defeated the leftist Iván Cepeda, who added 12.7 million votes (48.70%).
In recent weeks, Trump expressed on his social networks his direct support for De la Espriella’s candidacy and called Cepeda a representative of the “radical left.”
The US president maintained that an eventual victory for De la Espriella would favor economic growth, security and cooperation between both countries, in an intervention that provoked criticism from the Colombian Government and Democratic Party legislators.
