After polls closed in Colombia’s presidential elections on Sunday evening, hundreds of Bogotanos gathered in a plaza in the shadow of the towering architecture of Colombia’s National Museum and the Hotel Tequendama to watch the results come in on a projector. In the crowd were some of the most enthusiastic supporters of leftist candidate Iván Cepeda for what many thought would be a victory celebration. But, as pre-count results slowly trickled in, the enthusiasm gave way to anxiety about the future of the country.
Despite the fact that Cepeda had led all the polls—often by a large margin—the far-right candidate Abelardo De La Espriella came out on top of the pre-count with over 10.3 million votes—43.7 percent of the total votes. Cepeda, the candidate from the governing Pacto Histórico Party, came in a close second place with nearly 9.7 Million votes—40.9 percent of the total votes. Meanwhile, the traditional right-wing candidate from the uribista Centro Democrático Party, Paloma Valencia, came in a distant third place with 1.6 million votes—6.9 percent—while the centrist former mayor of Medellín, Sergio Fajardo, received over 1 million votes—4.3 percent.
The results were a massive disappointment for the Colombian left, especially given that current President Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, is set to leave office with a historically-high approval rating. Even still, a right-wing victory is far from guaranteed; though De la Espriella’s result was historic, Sunday’s mixed results also provided reasons for hope that Cepeda may be able to achieve a narrow victory.
A Farewell Tour in the Caribbean
Just a few days before Colombians headed to the polls on Sunday to decide who would succeed him, Petro embarked on a grand tour of the country’s Caribbean Coast.
Petro, who is legally barred from campaigning for any of the candidates, strategically used the tour to demonstrate the achievements of his government over the past four years in one of Colombia’s poorest regions. He also announced that the government would redistribute an additional 685 hectares of land to peasant families in the region, adding to the impressive total of 2.5 million hectares that have already been distributed in the past four years.
Cepeda’s trajectory as an advocate for victims of Colombia’s armed conflict and his personal experience as the son of an assassinated leftist leader have bolstered his reputation as an incorruptible politician.
Throughout the tour, Petro could be seen dancing champeta with workers in Cartagena’s Bazurto market and filling the plazas of the region’s largest cities. While he was not campaigning, the message was clear: to strengthen the changes that have greatly strengthened the country’s social safety net and lifted millions out of poverty, Colombians would need to vote for Senator Iván Cepeda.
Petro’s choice of the Caribbean for his tour was no coincidence: the region is one of the places where the government’s reforms have been felt most, and it is also the home of the day’s big winner, Abelardo De La Esperilla.
Cepeda also focused on the Caribbean, choosing Barranquilla as the city to hold his last event. Cepeda’s campaign. promised to deepen the popular reforms implemented during Petro’s presidency while correcting for some of the government’s more unpopular aspects, including a vow to crackdown on corruption. Cepeda also puts across a calm demeanor, which stands in contrast to Petro’s firebrand leadership style.
Cepeda’s trajectory as an advocate for victims of Colombia’s armed conflict and his personal experience as the son of an assassinated leftist leader have bolstered his reputation as an incorruptible politician. It has also brandished him with the image of someone who is open to dialogue with all sectors of Colombian society—something which he will soon need to put to the test as he negotiates with other parties to catch up to his right-wing rival in the runoff.
The Right Looks to Return
The day’s big winner, Abelardo De La Espriella, is an eccentric lawyer and influencer known for his flamboyant outfits and lavish lifestyle, leading some journalists to compare him to Saul Goodman, the similarly eccentric defender of drug traffickers in the series Breaking Bad. Like Goodman he has represented a series of controversial clients, ranging from ex-president Álvaro Uribe, to right-wing paramilitaries, to a police officer accused of murdering a protester, and the recently extradited former Venezuelan minister Alex Saab.
His campaign followed a similarly polemic style, taking inspiration from Donald Trump, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, and Argentina’s Javier Millei, while adding some uniquely Colombian elements—including praise for the paramilitaries who were responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths and human rights abuses in Colombia’s armed conflict. De La Espriella’s promise to crack down on crime through a massive offensive against armed groups, the creation of Bukele-style prisons, and the legalization of guns has gained popularity due to the increasing perception of insecurity in the country.
The day’s big winner, Abelardo de la Espriella, is an eccentric lawyer and influencer known for his flamboyant outfits and lavish lifestyle.
De la Espriella, who has lived in Italy for the last two years, was not the only choice for conservatives. Paloma Valencia, a senator from the party of former far-right President Álvaro Uribe, ran a campaign that sought to present her as a moderate alternative, though she is far from it. The granddaughter of a former president, many expected her to surge in the polls after her dominant performance in the March primary of conservative parties. While she was able to gain support from the country’s traditional parties and elements of the center by watering down some of her more controversial positions, on Sunday, she flopped, receiving only 6.9 percent of the vote.
Colombians thus head to a second round run-off that is so polarized that even the conventional far-right was deemed insufficiently radical to counter the left-wing project. Hanging over the entire elections, however, is the role of the United States—a factor that has become ominous after Trump’s endorsement of Abelardo two days after the election
In the Shadow of the Empire
Colombia’s electoral process was not immune from U.S. intervention. The Trump administration followed a similar pattern in Colombia as it did in recent elections in Honduras and Argentina: in the lead-up to the vote, Trump’s allies came out hard against Cepeda and warned about the consequences of voting for the left.
Florida Republican Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar endorsed de la Espriella ahead of the election, continuing her long-standing support for the most reactionary figures in Latin American politics. Another Florida Republican, Representative Carlos Giménez, released a video calling on Colombian voters to “save Colombia from the leftists in power” and “not to let what happened in Venezuela happen in Colombia.” This is a threat that could be interpreted as a call for U.S. military intervention if the left wins.
Republican Ohio Senator and former Colombian citizen Bernie Moreno was one of the most vocal proponents of U.S. interference. Moreno, who was born to an elite family in Bogotá, has long criticized Gustavo Petro; last year, he even called for him to be imprisoned alongside Venezuela’s former President Nicolás Maduro. In the days leading up to the election, Moreno met with de la Espriella and strengthened his interventionist rhetoric, stating that results from territories where armed groups are present should be excluded from the results. This would effectively mean disenfranchising the people who are most affected by the armed conflict and victimized by its protagonists.
Colombia’s electoral process was not immune from U.S. intervention.
Moreno also warned Colombians that if they voted for the left, they would face the same fate as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, alluding to the possibility of sanctions and U.S. intervention. The day before the election, he announced in a lengthy post that, despite having renounced his Colombian citizenship, he would be returning to the country to observe the elections and meet with both right-wing candidates to garner support for them. Considering his position as a foreign politician, this may constitute a violation of Colombian electoral law.
Though he did not endorse a first-round candidate, Trump has since put his finger on the scale. On Tuesday evening, he wrote on social media that it was his “honor to give Abelardo [de la Espriella] my complete and total endorsement.” He made sure to take a swipe at Cepeda as well, calling him a “Radical Left Marxist.”
The Road Ahead
Despite attempts at intervention by U.S. politicians as well as far-right Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, nearly 10 million voters supported Cepeda’s unapologetically leftist policies. This is especially true in the Amazon and Colombia’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts, territories with the largest concentration of Afro-Colombian and Indigenous peoples that have and continue to be ravaged by the country’s armed conflict.
While doing well in the country’s peripheral regions, Cepeda’s worst scores were in Colombia’s interior departments, home to much of Colombia’s middle class and areas where the traditional parties have maintained hegemony. Cepeda also did surprisingly poorly in Bogotá, a traditional stronghold—the party saw a 5.4 percent decline in support.
For this reason, Cepeda and his campaign may seek to pivot in order to expand their base. While it may make overtures to some who voted for Valencia but reject de la Espriella—her own Vice Presidential candidate, Daniel Oviedo, has implied he will not support the right-winger given his homophobia—the pool of right-wing voters who would support Cepeda is minuscule. Cepeda’s campaign is more likely to court centrist voters, something done by Petro in his successful 2022 victory. Nevertheless, this pool, too, is small—centrist candidates Claudia López and Sergio Fajardo combined received 1.2 million votes. While López supported Petro in 2022, she has since fallen out with him. For his part, Fajardo, who refused to endorse any candidate in 2018 and 2022, appears set to do the same though he has been a harsh critic of de la Espriella.
Another option is to double down on Petro’s agenda and seek to drive new voters to turn out for the runoff. Given Petro’s popularity and the fact that voter turnout was not as high as the 2022 election, if Cepeda’s campaign were to clearly communicate what is at stake to those who did not vote, they may be able to increase their votes in the periphery regions much like Petro did in 2022.
However Cepeda decides to move forward with his campaign he will have the difficult task of getting support from voters who are critical of Petro while showing to Petro’s supporters that he will not compromise on continuing the government’s agenda. When the runoff comes on June 21, the Colombian people will face a clear choice between deepening Petro’s progressive policies or a decline into the barbarity of fascism and a return to some of the darkest points in Colombia’s recent history.
Cruz Bonlarron Martínez is an independent writer and was a Fulbright Fellow in Colombia from 2021–2022. His writing on politics, human rights, and culture in Latin America and the Latin American diaspora has appeared in various U.S. and international publications.