By Alexander Villegas
BOGOTA, June 21 (Reuters) - Colombians vote on Sunday in a presidential runoff to determine whether the country continues on its leftist path or joins Latin America's rightward shift by electing a political outsider who has vowed to crack down on crime.
After a crowded first-round election produced no winner in May, voters will choose between two runoff candidates: leftist Senator Ivan Cepeda and Abelardo De La Espriella, a right-wing lawyer and businessman with no political experience.
Cepeda, 63, is vowing to continue the policies of President Gustavo Petro, a former rebel and the country's first leftist president, which include state pension payments for the poor, union-backed labor reforms, peace talks with armed groups that have fought the state for decades and a moratorium on new oil projects.
De La Espriella, 47, is proposing the exact opposite — ending talks with armed groups and carrying out a broad military offensive against them, and boosting Colombia's oil and gas sector.
De La Espriella blames Petro for the country's economic and security woes and has vowed to lower taxes and reduce the size of the state by up to 40%, but has said he will preserve Petro's 23% increase in the minimum wage, along with other popular social measures.
Whoever wins will grapple with high public debt and a divided Congress, which could stymie reform proposals.
Polls and a wary market favor De La Espriella, who won the most votes in the first round with 43%, but analysts expect a tight race. Both candidates have taken pains to raise turnout among the nearly half of eligible voters who skipped the May first round.
REGIONAL SHIFT
Voters in Chile, Argentina, Costa Rica and Ecuador have elected right-wing presidents in their latest presidential races, while Bolivia ended two decades of leftist rule by electing center-right Rodrigo Paz last year.
In Peru, where votes from a June 7 contest are still being counted, conservative Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, who served 16 years in prison for human rights abuses, is poised to win the presidency after three failed attempts.
Most of those elections, including Colombia's, were driven by concerns over rising crime and a weak economy.
In Colombia, peace talks initiated by Petro have largely failed as armed groups have grown in power and numbers, and drug trafficking gangs have expanded, leading to spikes in murders and extortion along the Caribbean coast.
De La Espriella has cast Petro and Cepeda, the son of a murdered communist leader, as allies of criminals, though Petro's government says it has seized more cocaine than any other government. Cepeda has rejected the accusations, saying there is no evidence for them.
Cepeda has critiqued De La Espriella's work as a lawyer for people tied to right-wing paramilitary groups and corruption cases, including Alex Saab, who faces U.S. charges for allegedly laundering money for ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. De La Espriella says his professional relationships do not involve any complicity or crime.
U.S. President Donald Trump has moved to increase his country's presence and influence in the region, including by arresting Maduro, conducting deadly strikes against alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and creating the Shield of the Americas, a military alliance of right-wing leaders pledging to fight drug trafficking.
Trump, who has publicly feuded with Petro, openly endorsed De La Espriella this month.
"It is my Honor to give Abelardo my Complete and Total Endorsement," Trump said on Truth Social, adding that the results of Sunday's race are "very important to the future of Colombia and its relationship to the United States."
More than 41 million Colombians are eligible to vote. Polls open for eight hours starting at 8 a.m. local time (1300 GMT). Initial results are expected a few hours after polls close.
(Reporting by Nelson Bocanegra, Luis Jaime Acosta and Alexander Villegas; Editing by Julia Symmes Cobb and Rod Nickel)
