Colombia: far-right De la Espriella advances first to runoff as Petro disowns results — MercoPress
Colombia: far-right De la Espriella advances first to runoff as Petro disowns results
A few hours after polls closed, President Gustavo Petro publicly rejected the provisional results and denounced without evidence a variation in the electoral roll of around 800,000 voters
Far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella took first place in the first round of the Colombian presidential elections held on Sunday, in a result that contradicted all previous polls and immediately opened an institutional crisis. With 99% of polling stations counted in the preliminary tally, De la Espriella, of the Defensores de la Patria movement, reached 43.7% of the vote —some 10.3 million ballots—, while leftist senator Iván Cepeda, of the ruling Pacto Histórico, obtained 40.9% with 9,649,081 votes. The runoff will be held on 21 June and the inauguration is scheduled for 7 August.
A few hours after polls closed, President Gustavo Petro publicly rejected the provisional results and denounced without evidence a variation in the electoral roll of around 800,000 voters. The president said he would only recognize the definitive scrutiny conducted by the judges of the Republic. Candidate Cepeda also disowned the preliminary results and requested clarifications on atypical voting patterns recorded in a number of polling stations that his team is verifying. De la Espriella responded from Barranquilla with a confrontational message directed at the president and his candidate: Do not dare to disown the results, he said, and called on the security forces and the Army to activate the constitutional mechanism in case the executive attempts to disregard the will of the Colombian people. The lawyer, 47, held that democracy must be maintained by reason or by force.
Right-wing uribista candidate Paloma Valencia, of the Centro Democrático, obtained 6.9% of the vote —some 1.6 million ballots—, a significant electoral setback for the sector led for two decades by former president Álvaro Uribe. Centrist Sergio Fajardo, of Dignidad y Compromiso, surpassed 4% with more than one million votes. Total turnout reached 23.3 million voters. Valencia announced within minutes her personal backing for De la Espriella. Former president Uribe did the same on his X account: Colombians, we have lost. I humbly take on my responsibilities. We keep our word, we will vote for him and we ask that people vote for him and for Colombia. Fajardo avoided commenting on the runoff. The uribista vice-presidential candidate, Juan Daniel Oviedo, announced he will communicate his position on 3 June.
De la Espriella, a declared admirer of Donald Trump, Nayib Bukele, and Javier Milei, has proposed solving the Colombian armed conflict in ninety days through an aerial offensive backed by the United States and Israel, the forced eradication of coca crops, and the construction of ten mega-prisons. His track record as a criminal defence lawyer includes the historical defence of paramilitary groups. Cepeda, a 63-year-old senator and historic leader for the victims of paramilitary violence, proposes to deepen the outgoing government’s social policy. The result places Colombia within the regional trend of the rise of far-right candidacies following the victories of Milei in Argentina, Bukele in El Salvador, and Daniel Noboa in Ecuador.