By Nelson Bocanegra, Luis Jaime Acosta and Alexander Villegas
BOGOTA, June 21 (Reuters) - Colombian right-wing candidate Abelardo De La Espriella is leading the country's Sunday presidential race, narrowly scraping by ahead of his leftist rival with nearly all ballots counted, as voters bet on his promises to lead a tough crackdown on crime and improve the struggling economy.
De La Espriella had 49.7% of the vote, while his rival, the leftist Senator Ivan Cepeda, was some 248,000 votes behind with 48.7%, according to an initial tally from the country's national registrar.
Cepeda, 63, had vowed 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 blames Petro for the country's economic and security woes and has vowed to end peace talks with rebels and criminal groups, boost the oil and gas sector, lower taxes and reduce the size of the state by up to 40%. But he has said he will preserve Petro's 23% increase in the minimum wage, along with other popular social measures.
“It is a victory for Colombia — a change after four lost years with no clear direction,” said Viviana Olivos, a 46-year-old mechanical engineer, as she gathered with other De La Espriella supporters in coastal Barranquilla, where he is expected to appear.
The lawyer, who has no political experience, will have to grapple with high public debt and a divided Congress, which could stymie reform proposals.
More than 41 million Colombians were eligible to vote, with more than 26.2 million casting ballots. Some 420,000 voters turned in blank ballots, usually seen as a protest vote, the registrar figures showed.
Cepeda supporters remained hopeful that the required verification of ballots from each polling station, which in the first round showed little difference to the initial count, could give them the victory. Petro earlier posted videos on social media he said showed instances of fraud, adding later that because the race was so close, the country would need to await a final check and count of ballots.
“We are hopeful that now, with the vote count and the work of lawyers, votes can be recovered,” Yesin Moreno, a 32-year-old audiovisual director, said as he awaited Cepeda at an event in Bogota.
In upper class neighborhoods in Bogota, supporters cheered and honked car horns.
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, like Colombia's, were driven by concerns over 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 the North American country's presence and influence in the region, including by arresting Maduro, conducting deadly strikes against small boats in the Caribbean, which he accused of drug trafficking without evidence, as well as 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, saying the results of Sunday's race are "very important to the future of Colombia and its relationship to the United States."
(Reporting by Nelson Bocanegra, Luis Jaime Acosta, Alexander Villegas and Carlos Vargas; Editing by Julia Symmes Cobb, Rod Nickel, Mark Porter, Nia Williams and Aurora Ellis)
