World Notes COLOMBIA

After a violent election campaign left three presidential candidates dead, Colombians gingerly went to the polls last week in the lowest turnout ever. As expected, they elected Cesar Gaviria Trujillo of the ruling Liberal Party as their new leader, with a surprisingly large 47% of the vote.

Gaviria, 43, owes his victory in part to his willingness to pick up the mantle of antidrug crusaders after his party's leading candidate, Luis Carlos Galan, was gunned down last August by drug-cartel assassins. Thrust unexpectedly into the limelight at the urging of Galan's family, Gaviria emerged as the most vocal of the candidates against the narcotraficantes. "I am a supporter of extradition," says Gaviria, but he wants to use it only as a "last resort."

An economist by training, the President-elect, who will take office on Aug. 7, also insists that the U.S. do more to help win the drug war. He complains that unfair tariffs on legitimate exports like coffee and flowers hinder efforts to squelch the drug trade. "The U.S. has to understand we don't want their troops," he says. "We want to be treated fairly as a trading partner."