BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Bombastic pro-Trump lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella pulled ahead in Colombia’s race for the presidency in the first round of elections over the weekend, capitalizing on a growing appetite for heavy-handed crackdowns on criminal groups across Latin America.
The outcome dealt a political blow to second-place finisher, progressive Sen. Iván Cepeda, and his ally, President Gustavo Petro. Both questioned the results of the election Sunday night, without providing evidence.
De la Espriella rapidly gained traction in the lead-up to Sunday’s election, winning nearly 44% of the vote, and surpassing Cepeda, who had consistently led polling throughout the campaign and won less than 41% of the vote.
The two are slated to continue to a runoff election on June 21, where de la Espriella is expected to scoop up additional votes from Colombians who supported other conservative candidates in the first round.
Cepeda will face an uphill battle in the runoff, said Sergio Guzmán, a political analyst. “Abelardo de la Espriella won the first round. In other words, that’s a shift in public opinion that is very difficult to overcome. So now Abelardo is emerging as the likely favorite to win.”
Joining a political shift in the Americas
De la Espriella, known as “El Tigre” or “The Tiger,” has never held office in Colombia and prided himself on living a luxurious life in Italy before deciding to run for president. He pitched himself as an outsider who would cozy up to U.S. President Donald Trump and follow El Salvador President Nayib Bukele's war on gangs, which has driven down homicide rates but fueled accusations of human rights abuses.
“I will wipe out narcoterrorism and those who I've declared a military target like cockroaches, like rats. I will unleash upon them the wrath of God never seen before,” de la Espriella said in an interview with The Associated Press in the final stretch of the campaign, where he promised to open 10 mega-prisons to fight crime.
He joins a growing number of leaders across Latin America — from Chile to Honduras — seeking to latch onto the “Bukele model” as voters across Latin America are increasingly ditching leaders that pitched progressive policies aimed at addressing the root issues of conflict, such as lack of opportunities for young people and corruption.
De la Espriella's supporters come from a wide range of backgrounds. Yolanda Peréz, a 64-year-old woman serving coffee in the downtown of Colombia's capital, Bogotá, said with a wink the day before the election: “I'm thinking of voting for El Tigre.”
Miguel Maheca, a 20-year-old first-time voter, flashed his voting ballot to his mother as he strolled out of the polling station on Sunday, saying with a grin, “Love isn't what's going to make us safe in Colombia."
But experts say El Salvador's security successes will be nearly impossible to replicate in a country like Colombia, which is more than 50 times larger than the Central American nation and has many more armed groups fighting for territory.
The polarized vote comes as the Trump administration is playing a more aggressive role in Latin America than any U.S. government in decades, placing mounting pressure on countries like Colombia, Mexico and Ecuador to crack down on crime.
De la Espriella, 47, made a name for himself as a lawyer defending high-profile clients such as former President Álvaro Uribe, as well as controversial figures like Alex Saab, a close ally of Venezuela’s ousted president Nicolás Maduro who faces legal issues in the U.S. and whom he stopped representing about seven years ago.
A blow to Cepeda
De la Espriella's rise as a presidential candidate spells trouble for progressive Cepeda, who consistently led polls in the lead up to Sunday's election, though his competitor quickly gained speed in the weeks ahead of the vote.
Cepeda is a progressive senator who has promised to carry on his ally Petro's fraught plan to achieve “total peace” by negotiating peace pacts with guerrillas and criminal gangs.
Their political movement was born from a fierce rejection by many Colombians of a militarized offensive by Uribe in decades past used to beat back the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which ended in thousands of civilians being killed by Colombian forces in a scandal known as “false positives.”
De la Espriella “represents a return to the paramilitary politics and drug-trafficking — a mafia-run, plutocratic and corrupt past that the country experienced during Álvaro Uribe’s two administrations,” Cepeda said on Sunday.
On Monday, Cepeda called on de la Espriella to debate him ahead of the second round of elections.
Petro, a former rebel, won Colombia's presidency in 2022 in a historic election that ended decades of right-wing domination by leaders from Uribe's political movement. He gained massive support from rural-dwelling, Indigenous and poorer Colombians who felt they had never been directly spoken to by Colombian leaders.
Now, that movement is backed into a corner.
“This is de la Espriella’s election to lose,” wrote Renata Segura, director of International Crisis Group's Latin America and the Caribbean Program. “Cepeda thought he could win appealing squarely to the left, and that proved to be a massive mistake. How he pivots in the next month will determine if he has any chance to win.”
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This version corrects the spelling of the first name of the leading candidate to Abelardo.
