American Marconi Wireless News - Pro-Trump presidential hopeful takes early lead as Colombia counts votes

Results of the high-stakes elections, which will reshape the country's fragile peace process and relations with the United States, are expected at around 6 pm local time (2300GMT).

With over 89.58 percent of voting centers reporting, White House-backed lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella had a lead of 50.1 percent against leftist Senator Ivan Cepeda, who was at 48.25 percent, according to figures from the National Registry.

Security dominated a hyper-fractious campaign that was marred by guerrilla bomb attacks, hundreds of threats against candidates and the murder of a leading conservative presidential hopeful.

"The atmosphere is much more tense than in past elections," Angie Munoz, a 30-year-old digital marketing employee, told AFP in Bogota.

"There's a lot of aggression on both sides," she said. "We're feeling very uncertain about what's going to happen today."

Frontrunner De la Espriella has won US President Donald Trump's "complete and total endorsement" and hopes to ride a wave that has swept rightist candidates to power across Latin America.

The dual US-Colombian national, who calls himself "The Tiger," won May's first round vote promising to wage war on cartels and guerrilla groups.

"Today is the most important ballot in Colombia's history," he said as he voted in his Caribbean stronghold, Barranquilla.

Wearing a national football jersey, he was surrounded by hundreds of supporters who sang the national anthem, a nationalism De la Espriella has been keen to stoke.

"Colombia hasn't felt this kind of patriotism in a long time -- now people actually want to go out and vote," said 40-year-old businessman Juan Marquez in Barranquilla.

During the campaign, the 47-year-old told AFP that if elected, he would end sputtering peace talks with dissident groups and launch a 90-day campaign of US-backed airstrikes against them.

He advocates the right to carry arms, construction of mega-prisons, fracking, scaling back the state and a dollarized economy.

- Dialogue over war -

A decade after a landmark peace deal ended the conflict with FARC guerrillas that killed a quarter of a million people, much of Colombia is at peace and prospering.

But cartels and dissident guerrilla groups still control pockets of the country, cocaine exports are at an all-time high and Colombia remains one of the world's most economically unequal countries.

Instead of focusing on security, Cepeda has appealed to progressives and the poor, who have benefited from a drop in poverty and a bump in wages in four years of leftist rule.

The 63-year-old philosopher-turned-senator, an architect of peace talks, cast his vote in Bogota.

"When we win, we are going to govern for the whole country and not just for one sector," the candidate told the press, surrounded by bodyguards, as his supporters chanted: "The people are with you!"

Trump has suggested that if "radical left Marxist" Cepeda wins, the future of Colombia's ties with Washington would be uncertain -- putting billions of dollars of aid in question.

But Cepeda's supporters fear the right could bring a return to brutal security policies seen in past decades.

"The right winning would be the worst-case scenario because we'd be going back 200 years. They're going to take away our fundamental rights," said 54-year-old shopkeeper Andres Julio Meza.

The first round of voting showed Colombians racing to the political extremes and a total collapse of the political center and the traditional right, which has run the country for much of the last two centuries.

Ch.Kahalev--AMWN