Abelardo de la Espriella, a criminal defense lawyer and far-right political outsider, won Colombia’s presidential runoff on June 21, securing 49.65% of the vote to narrowly defeat leftist Iván Cepeda, who received 48.7%, according to preliminary results released by the National Civil Registry.
With 99.93% of ballots counted, de la Espriella had secured 12.95 million votes, winning by a margin of 247,686 votes over Cepeda’s 12.7 million, according to The Guardian. The margin was considerably narrower than the first round three weeks earlier, when de la Espriella had beaten Cepeda by 673,000 votes.
De la Espriella, who founded the far-right Defenders of the Homeland movement, rose to prominence as a criminal defense lawyer representing paramilitary leaders before branching into liquor, real estate, and menswear businesses. The Trump-endorsed candidate announced his presidential bid in July 2025 and presented himself as an anti-establishment outsider despite his long association with Colombia’s rightwing political establishment through his legal career, according to reporting from The Guardian.
His victory marks a sharp rightward turn after four years under Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first and only leftwing president, who backed Cepeda as his successor. Petro is constitutionally barred from seeking re-election and will leave office in about six weeks. When he does, only Mexico, Brazil (which holds elections in October), Uruguay, and Guatemala will remain under leftwing governments in the region, The Guardian reported.
De la Espriella’s win extends a wave of far-right electoral victories across Latin America. The result follows recent wins by Nasry Asfura in Honduras and José Antonio Kast in Chile, while Keiko Fujimori leads the vote count in Peru, according to The Guardian. De la Espriella received Trump’s endorsement only after winning the first round; the president later expressed his support for the victory in a phone call with the president-elect.
The campaign centered on security concerns and violence that has gripped the country. Although violence remains far below the extraordinarily high levels recorded in the decades before the 2016 peace agreement, the past year has been the most violent since then, according to The Guardian. De la Espriella prevailed on a promise to adopt an iron fist approach against criminal groups, pledging to build 10 maximum-security “mega-prisons” and vowing to return to full-scale military confrontation with armed groups, a sharp break from Petro’s “total peace” negotiation plan.
De la Espriella will take office on August 7, 2026, alongside economist José Manuel Restrepo as vice president. Restrepo served as finance minister under Petro’s conservative predecessor, Iván Duque, and the president-elect said he would be responsible for implementing a plan to shrink the state by 40%. They will govern with a minority in congress and face a deeply divided country after the most polarized election in years, in which the two candidates failed to agree on holding a single debate, according to The Guardian.
Following the preliminary results, leftist candidate Cepeda and President Petro both declined to recognize the outcome, with Cepeda’s team announcing plans to challenge 33,000 polling stations across the country. Petro alleged irregularities in the preliminary count without providing evidence, drawing on his pattern from the first round when he made similar claims that drew criticism from election experts. The difference between the preliminary count and official tally in the first round was less than 0.1%, The Guardian reported. The official scrutiny process is expected to take about two more days.
Sources
- The Guardian — final vote count (49.65% vs 48.7%), vote margin (247,686), de la Espriella’s background as criminal defense lawyer, his association with Defenders of the Homeland, Petro’s exit timeline, regional leftist governments remaining, comparable Latin American victories, campaign focus on security, mega-prisons pledge, de la Espriella’s take-office date (August 7), Restrepo as vice president, state shrinkage plan, minority congress status, polarization level, debate refusal, Cepeda’s challenge of polling stations, Petro’s fraud allegations, first-round count accuracy
- Facebook (ColombiaOne) — preliminary results showing de la Espriella 50.52% and Cepeda 47.88%
- France 24 — preliminary vote count and election dynamics
- Reuters — de la Espriella’s lead in tight race, Trump endorsement
- AP News — runoff election between progressive and conservative outsider
- PBS — de la Espriella as pro-Trump lawyer, crime crackdown promise
- Al Jazeera — far-right vs leftist candidate comparison
- DW.com — preliminary results and candidate positioning
- The New York Times — Trump-backed candidate victory, dual US-Colombian citizenship
- Financial Times — de la Espriella as criminal defense lawyer, high-profile clients
- NACLA — far-right surge and historic runoff context
