Colombia's De la Espriella wins first round, faces Cepeda in June runoff
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- Abelardo de la Espriella, a criminal lawyer and millionaire businessman who has never held public office, won Colombia's first round with 43.7% (about 10.3m votes) over leftwing senator Iván Cepeda at 40.9% (9.6m votes), with 100% of ballots counted.
- De la Espriella is running on a Bukele-inspired mano dura platform to scrap President Gustavo Petro's 'total peace' negotiations, calling Colombia's security crisis — the worst since the 2016 Farc peace deal — the centerpiece of his campaign.
- President Gustavo Petro rejected the preliminary count on X without evidence, claiming the tally included '800,000 additional people'; former National Civil Registry chief Juan Carlos Galindo Vácha called it 'disinformation,' noting historical gaps between preliminary and official counts run under 1%.
- Cepeda, a philosopher and human rights senator backed by Petro, echoed the fraud allegations citing 'atypical voting patterns' at unnamed polling stations, likewise without presenting evidence.
- De la Espriella consolidated the right as Paloma Valencia — once polling above 20% — collapsed to 6.9% on Sunday and immediately endorsed him for the runoff.
- A win for De la Espriella would push Colombia out of the small Latin American left-governed bloc (alongside Mexico and Brazil) and into the regional rightward tide already seen in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia and Honduras.
Why it matters: A De la Espriella presidency would push Colombia into the Latin American rightward tide and replace Petro's peace negotiations with Bukele-style mass incarceration. The near-term risk: Petro's evidence-free fraud claim could delegitimize the June 21 runoff, dragging down Cepeda — the very candidate Petro backs — by tainting the process that put him there.
