The ruling Liberal Party candidate, Mr Horacio Serpa, and the Conservative Mr Andres Pastrana ended Colombia's presidential elections neck-and-neck yesterday, forcing what promises to be a fiercely contested run-off vote in three weeks' time.
Even before the official vote tally ended, the two men began wooing voters who backed Ms Noemi Sanin, an independent whose strong bid to become Colombia's first woman president left her in third place with nearly 27 per cent of the votes.
Official results with more than 97 per cent of the ballots counted gave Mr Serpa, a former interior minister and President Ernesto Samper's handpicked successor, 34.6 per cent of the ballots against 34.3 per cent for Mr Pastrana. With neither garnering the 50 per cent needed to win outright, the country now faces a run-off on June 21st.
A charismatic former foreign minister, Ms Sanin was a favourite of voters who believed in her campaign pledges to fight the political machine, well-oiled with corruption and graft, that analysts say the Liberals and Conservatives have used to dominate Colombia's politics for more than 150 years.
Despite finishing third, Sanin won a majority in the capital, Bogota, and Colombia's two other leading cities. And political analysts said the record turnout for the election was probably due to her ability to attract voters fed up with politics as usual.
She refused to endorse either Mr Serpa and Mr Pastrana in a speech thanking her supporters late on Sunday, saying the strong vote in her favour was "a message of rejection and protest directed at the traditional parties and a mandate for change". But both leading candidates spoke of her as a friend and political ally who might throw her make-or-break weight behind them.
"The success of Noemi in the last weeks has helped me better understand the feeling of Colombians who are looking for union rather than confrontation," Mr Serpa said.
"Today Noemi Sanin has shown that sooner or later a woman will become president of Colombia," Mr Pastrana said, praising her in a separate speech at his own headquarters.