Colombia’s First-Ever ‘Outsider’ President
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In a rare feat, Colombians elected their first-ever ‘outsider’ candidate to the country’s highest office in more than 200 years of republican history. On Sunday, 21 June, lawyer-businessman Abelardo de la Espriella won the second round of the Colombian presidential elections by a razor-thin margin of 0.96 per cent against the Historic Pact party’s Iván Cepeda. This would not have been possible without the record number of Colombians who turned out to vote. At 63.60 percent, this is the highest voter turnout in Colombia since the country’s return to democracy in 1958.
De la Espriella is a true outsider: he has never held public office, remains detached even from the politicians that endorsed him, and is not even backed by the traditional business elite. His victory is owed to his media-savvy persona, which is self-styled as ‘El Tigre’ (the Tiger), a tough-on-crime, libertarian candidate who vows to change Colombian politics.
Despite the slim margin, Cepeda formally conceded and accepted his defeat. This is a positive sign that will help ensure a clear and smooth transition of power. Additionally, de la Espriella’s victory speech struck a conciliatory tone, addressing those who did not vote for him: “Your opinions will be heard; you will never have to fear for thinking differently.” The conciliatory behaviour of both candidates, despite their bitterly fought campaign, speaks to the strength of Colombia’s democracy and respect for the country’s democratic institutions.
De la Espriella is a true outsider: he has never held public office, remains detached even from the politicians that endorsed him, and is not even backed by the traditional business elite. His victory is owed to his media-savvy persona, which is self-styled as ‘El Tigre’ (the Tiger), a tough-on-crime, libertarian candidate who vows to change Colombian politics.
Colombia’s ‘Conservative’ Turn? Not Quite
Given the number of recently elected right-wing presidents in the Latin American region, there will be a temptation to describe de la Espriella’s win as part of a ‘right-wing’ or ‘conservative’ wave. After all, right-wing leaders have been elected in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Honduras. In neighbouring Peru too, the right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former dictator Alberto Fujimori, is likely to be declared the winner of the 7 June elections, where the margin of victory remains so thin (currently 0.2 percent) that the National Office of Electoral Processes has yet to declare a winner. In the cases of Colombia and Peru, the narrowest of margins points more to a polarised electorate than to any trend or ‘wave’.
In Colombia’s case, this is not a ‘conservative’ wave. It is an anti-establishment and anti-incumbency vote. To begin with, de la Espriella does not even belong to a political party; he ran as an independent candidate. His victory is a testament to the fact that Colombians are tired of establishment politicians. One of de la Espriella’s main campaign slogans has been to reject those he calls ‘los de siempre’ (akin to ‘the same old faces’, a nod to the political establishment). In the first round of elections held on 31 May, the establishment’s right-wing candidate, Paloma Valencia, backed by former president Álvaro Uribe, received a meagre 6.92 percent of the vote, while the centrist Sergio Fajardo, whose political career spans more than two decades, obtained an even lower 4.26 percent. In his nearly hour-long victory speech, de la Espriella did not even mention Uribe, who remains the torchbearer of the political right in Colombia.
The biggest challenge for de la Espriella is his slim mandate, with nearly half the country having voted for his political opponents.
Moreover, de la Espriella owes a portion of his votes to the anti-incumbency sentiment against Cepeda’s Historic Pact party. The incumbent president, Gustavo Petro, leaves office with disapproval ratings reaching 55 percent in June 2026. Many Colombians decided to take a leap of faith with de la Espriella because they did not want a continuation of a government they believed had worsened the security situation.
Going Forward
The biggest challenge for de la Espriella is his slim mandate, with nearly half the country having voted for his political opponents. He also begins his term with only 4 seats out of 108 in the Senate. The left-wing opposition, led by Petro and supported by Cepeda, will attempt to stymie de la Espriella’s moves as much as possible. He will have to tone down his far-right or libertarian proposals and make concessions to pass reforms. Given de la Espriella’s limited exposure to government, his running mate, José Manuel Restrepo, will be called upon to formulate and enact much of the government’s policy. Restrepo can draw on his experience as a London School of Economics-trained former finance and commerce minister to tackle Colombia’s myriad challenges. The new government’s ability to govern will, in large part, be determined by its ability to find common ground with political collaborators and rivals alike, build consensus, and deploy a capable technocratic cabinet. Cutting government spending will be difficult when over 90 percent of it is protected by legal and constitutional means.
The new government’s ability to govern will, in large part, be determined by its ability to find common ground with political collaborators and rivals alike, build consensus, and deploy a capable technocratic cabinet.
De la Espriella’s main campaign promise of clamping down on security threats and adopting the mano dura (iron fist) model, followed by Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, will be far more difficult to fulfil. Bukele’s model may work, even if only temporarily, in a country of 6 million people, but it would be impossible to scale it to Colombia’s population of 54 million. Astoundingly, El Salvador currently has a larger prison population than Colombia. The rhetoric of being tough on crime is easier to employ during an election campaign than it is to implement in practice.
Hari Seshasayee is a co-founder of Consilium Group and a visiting fellow of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF).
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