Juan Manuel Santos wins Colombia's presidential elections

BOGOTA: Conservative ex-defense minister Juan Manuel Santos handily won Colombia's presidential runoff vote on Sunday with a whopping 69.2% of the vote, trouncing his Green Party rival, authorities said.

Santos, who will succeed popular two-term President Alvaro Uribe, brought in the lion's share of the votes over Green Party rival Antanas Mockus, a former Bogota mayor who drew 27.4 percent of the vote, the National Electoral Board added, with 53.9 percent of votes counted.

"Once again, thank you, God. Thank you Colombia, thanks for the trust that nine million Colombians have placed in us," Santos told thousands of supporters alongside his running mate Angelino Garzon, in El Campin stadium after his win was announced.

"It is now time for unity in Colombia," Santos added.

His victory however could ring hollow to many of Colombia's disaffected, who will not likely see it as an unquestionable mandate.

Turnout was estimated at just about 12 million of almost 30 million registered voters, officials said.

Balloting was marred by some violent clashes around the South American nation, the staunchest US ally in the region, which left 17 people dead, including 11 members of the country's security forces and six rebels.

The light turnout was being blamed on everything from rainy weather to World Cup fever that kept many at home following the football matches on TV and radio.

But anger at the system is a constant particularly among millions of the poor in a country in which 46 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

Still for many like university student Ximena Romero, 27, the status quo was not a bad outcome. "Uribe's legacy is alive, because Santos is the same as Uribe," she said.

Indeed Santos, 58, appeared to cash in fully on Uribe's political record, over Mockus, 58, in this runoff.

Uribe was credited with restoring a greater measure of security and economic gains to a country that has seen decades of instability as Bogota battles leftist insurgencies and lawlessness in remoter areas.

Nearly 350,000 security forces were deployed to protect the elections overseen by the Colombian Election Observation Mission and the Organization of American States.

In the worst of the day's violence, attackers ambushed and killed seven police officers with explosives in the province of Norte de Santander, which borders Venezuela, senior state official Margarita Silva said.

A spokesman later said all other ambushed police had been accounted for, after eight were feared missing.

Guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army, as well as drug traffickers and criminal gangs, are all active in the area where the attack took place.

The vote in violence-torn Colombia comes with the country keen to maintain political continuity in the face of an ongoing war with Marxist FARC rebels.

Santos, the big winner in the first round of voting on May 30 with 46.6 percent against 21.5 percent for Mockus, has promised "to keep in place the legacy of Uribe, the best president Colombia has had."

The insurgents have been hit hard in recent years by operations organized by Uribe and by Santos, who stepped down from his defense post last year to campaign for the presidency.

Praised for turning around the ultra-violent capital Bogota as mayor, Mockus announced earlier this year that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease but said it would not affect his work and should not alter his bid.

Political analysts, though, held out little expectation that the former mathematics professor and son of Lithuanian immigrants had managed to turn around his faltering campaign.

The outgoing Uribe, 57, leaves office with a 70 percent approval rating, having served two consecutive mandates from 2002.

Colombians associate Santos with several successful military campaigns, such as the attack against a FARC encampment in Ecuador in March 2008 that killed the group's number two Raul Reyes, and the rescue of 15 high-profile hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt, in July 2008.

Santos has vowed to reduce the endemic problems of unemployment and underemployment, including a promise to create 2.5 million jobs in four years.