Santos Allies Hold Colombian Congress With Reduced Majority

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’s allies retained control of Congress in elections yesterday, bolstering his bid to secure a peace deal with Marxist guerrillas who have been fighting the state since the 1960s.

Santos’s U Party, the Liberal Party and the Radical Change Party, which all supported him during his first term, had won 92 out of 166 seats in the Lower House, and 47 of 102 seats in the Senate, with more than 98 percent of the votes counted. That’s enough for the government to get a peace deal through the Senate with the support of smaller parties, said Francisco Rodriguez, chief Andean economist at Bank of America.