On May 31, far-right outsider candidate Abelardo de la Espriella outperformed polls to win the first round of voting in Colombia’s presidential elections. He will face leftist Senator Iván Cepeda, President Gustavo Petro’s hand-picked successor, in a runoff on June 21.
De la Espriella received 10.3 million votes (43.74 percent), while Cepeda obtained 9.6 million votes (40.90 percent), according to the preliminary count. Security and Colombia’s long-running internal conflict are principal themes of the campaign, and the two candidates have presented radically different strategies to address those concerns.
At the center are peace-building efforts with non-state armed groups and criminal organizations that have expanded their influence in recent years. Cepeda wants to continue Petro’s strategy of negotiating with armed actors in exchange for their disarmament, a policy known as “Paz Total,” or Total Peace. Petro’s approach has yielded mixed results, marked by both serious setbacks and some unforced errors on the part of the administration. So far, the government has failed to reachea final agreement with any armed group. Meanwhile, armed organizations have continued to expand in the years since the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) disarmed in 2017, continuing a trend that began under former right-wing President Ivan Duque.
On the other side of the spectrum, De la Espriella offers an “iron fist” strategy to combat armed and criminal groups. His proposals include expandin the powers of Colombia’s security and intelligence agencies and even launching a “Plan Colombia 2.0,” modeled after the aggressive and controversial U.S.-backed military operations waged against the now-defunct FARC in the early 2000s. The ultra-right-wing defense lawyer publicly admires Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and plans to copy his crackdown efforts on civil society, including building “megaprisons” for violent or repeat offenders.
A Polarized Campaign
As preliminary results trickled in throughout Sunday evening, showing a growing lead by Abelardo de la Espriella, Cepeda’s supporters at a campaign event in Bogotá fell into silence. Realizing the victory party would not unfold as expected, some shed tears. Many spoke of their fears of a return to a dark period in Colombia’s history, when security forces operated with impunity and committed grave crimes and human rights violations.
In response to De La Espriella’s victory, Cepeda offered hope to supporters in Bogota. “To those who believe in the project of life, not death, I invite you to join us on this side—the right side of history,” she said. “The fight continues, and we will prevail.”
Many spoke of their fears of a return to a dark period in Colombia’s history, when security forces operated with impunity.
Marta Peña is a leader in a working-class neighborhood in southern Bogotá. “Thanks to Pacto Histórico, women were given a voice in the political debate, and now we continue in our fight for peace, harmony, and a better country and a happy environment for Colombian families”, she said. Peña worked in her community to campaign for the left-wing candidate. She didn’t seem sad, but rather more determined.
Further complicating an already polarized election season, Petro has raised accusations of irregularities in the preliminary vote. Initially, Cepeda repeated Petro’s accusations, but the following day he announced at a press conference that they had no concrete evidence of fraud. “At this point, we have not found evidence of any incidents of such magnitude as to warrant a statement regarding irregularities,” he said.
On Tuesday morning, Petro once again raised the issue of fraud in the electoral lists and posted what he claimed was evidence on his X account.
From “Total Peace” to “Total War”
De la Espriella is a sharp critic of Petro’s Total Peace strategy, which he says amounts to impunity for criminal groups. Instead, he calls for a throwback to the aggressive military policies of right-wing former President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010).
Uribe has long been accused of having deep ties to right-wing paramilitary groups responsible for the killings thousands of leftist activists, social leaders, and civilians in the years preceding the demobilization of the the United Self-Defense Forces (AUC) in 2006.
De la Espriella served as a public advocate for the AUC during its demobilization under the Uribe administration. At the time, he ran a public relations campaign on the group’s behalf and established a private foundation to support its negotiations with the government.
De la Espriella describes his security agenda as a “reboot” of Uribe initiatives, this time supplemented by mass-surveillance technology, drones, and artificial intelligence. He advocates for the creation of a new intelligence body—a “Search Bloc”—that would report directly to the presidency and be tasked with combating corruption and organized crime.
The proposed bloc, which would be made up of military veterans and reservists operating in their own communities, has been labeled a paramilitary force by critics.
De la Espriella has also called for the construction of 10 megaprisons to house violent offenders, financed by the private sector and international funding. He would expand the powers and budgets of the Armed Forces, which would wage “Total War” on narco-traffickers and non-state armed groups. Other proposals include the use of facial recognition technology in surveillance systems in urban areas and public transportation; the legalization of civilian firearm ownership, currently illegal under Colombian law; and the implementation of “blockchain record-keeping” to minimize corruption within the state bureaucracy.
The two radically different security strategies reflect “broader and growing polarization” in the campaign, said Francisco Daza, an analyst at PARES, a conflict-monitoring think tank. Daza says that De la Espriella’s hardline approach carries “serious risks regarding human rights violations by the public forces, as well as casts a shadow of precedence of policies [implemented by Uribe] that followed a similar model.”
Cepeda’s “Human Security”
In contrast, Iván Cepeda sharply criticizes purely military strategies as having failed for decades. He is instead running on a platform of dealing with crime and insecurity by addressing the root causes behind them.
His policy proposals emphasize protection for communities while reducing inequality and poverty in the country, both of which are endemic. Cepeda also wants to fortify state protections for social leaders and environmental defenders in the most dangerous country in the world for activists, who are frequently killed by the criminal and armed groups whose interests they oppose.
Ivan Cepeda sharply criticizes purely military strategies as having failed for decades.
He advocates for a security focus on top-level drug traffickers and money laundering apparatuses rather than on the rural poor who cultivate coca leaves—the base ingredient in cocaine—out of a lack of economic options. Along that line, he has also proposed further legalization and regulation of coca leaves for use in other industries, such as Indigenous medicine, tea, and pharmaceuticals.
Though he has spoken of using military pressure to achieve strategic negotiation goals, Cepeda strongly criticizes right-wing plans that focus solely on crackdowns. He advocates for increasing healthcare and education rights in regions affected by conflict, as well as increased autonomy so that local leaders can address root causes on their own without micro-management from Bogotá.
“The focus would obviously be on negotiations,” said Daza, the PARES analyst. But, “just as Petro has done in his last two years of government, they will be paired with military actions against those groups that have made negotiation or peace processes unsustainable.”
Petro has increasingly used military strikes on armed groups that have abandoned negotiations, such as the FARC dissident group Estado Mayor Central (EMC), which carried out more than 20 bombings in the departments of Cauca and Valle de Cauca last month.
Luana Alves, a councilwoman from Brazil’s Socialist Party, was invited by Cepeda’s campaign to observe the elections in Colombia. She believes that De La Espriella is offering Colombians a dangerous illusion. He “presents false solutions of more authoritarianism and violence, as if that were the solution,” she said. “And we know it isn’t.”
For Alves, a more empathetic and democratic approach offers a better path forward. “Across the region, campaigns are increasingly dominated by misinformation, outright fake news, and manipulation.”
Still, she cautioned against dismissing De La Espriella’s supporters outright. “I don’t believe that all of De La Espriella’s voters, just like all of Bolsonaro’s voters, are fascists,” she said. “Many people are simply disillusioned and hopeless, and believe some of the lies from the extreme right.”
“I think it’s necessary to listen to people,” she continued, “and show them that solutions to our problems are possible through more democratic, non-authoritarian policies.”
A Do-or-Die Second Round
Tensions among an already polarized electorate have increased further following the first round of voting. On Monday night, hundreds of young people took to the streets in Bogotá and Tunja, the capital of the neighboring department of Boyacá, to demonstrate in support of Cepeda. Meanwhile, De La Espriella’s campaign accused Petro of trying to steal the election and incite “social unrest.”
Some of Cepeda’s supporters have accused the United States of meddling in the race. President Donald Trump endorsed De La Espriella via a message of congratulations on Truth Social, saying he will “stop illegal immigration, fight crime and drugs, and restore public order!”
He also called Cepeda a “radical marxist leftist” and suggested that a Cepeda victory would damage relations between Colombia and the United States.
Several liberal and centrist presidential candidates who were eliminated in the first round have urged Cepeda to move toward the political center if they want his endorsement in a race in which only a few points could turn the tide on De La Espriella’s front-runner status.
Center-right candidate Sergio Fajardo, who won just over a million votes in the first round and has yet to endorse either candidate, criticized the increasingly combative tone of the campaign. “There are other ways of doing politics,” he said. “We must also take into account other moderate and centrist voters.”
Peña, social leader in Bogotá, disagrees that Cepeda should dilute his platform to win over undecided voters.
“We cannot afford to go back to the past,” she said. “Instead, we must continue building a better country. I am convinced that if we stay the course with these proposals and this vision, we can achieve real change.”
Daniela Díaz is a journalist focused on the implementation of peace and women’s issues. She has been published at VICE World News, World Politics Review, and a host of Colombian media companies.
Joshua Collins is a freelance reporter in Colombia focused on civil rights, migration, and the impact of crime upon human rights.