De la Espriella’s legal platform and order wins the Colombian vote after receiving Trump’s support
Abelardo “The Tiger” de la Espriella, a criminal defense lawyer with no prior political experience and a prominent public figure, is on course to win Colombia’s presidential election Sunday night by a narrow margin.
De la Espriella, 47, led his opponent, Sen. Ivan Cepeda, 63, just under one percent of the vote, or just over 250,000 votes and 99.9% of the vote. Election authorities have not yet declared the official winner.
More than 41 million Colombians are eligible to vote, with turnout reaching nearly 64 percent – one of the highest in the country’s history.
Foreigner de la Espriella, who rose to prominence by pushing a tough, zero-tolerance campaign against gangs, warned Cepeda, as well as current President Gustavo Petro, not to underestimate the consequences.
“Petro and Cepeda, who avoided causing a social explosion – respect the popular decision, democracy, there will be no third round in the streets,” de la Espriella told his supporters behind bulletproof glass in his hometown of Barranquilla, on Colombia’s Atlantic coast.
For his part, Cepeda told supporters at a Bogota hotel that he saw the vote count as “information” that was “illegal or binding” and that he planned to challenge the 33,000 polling tables.
“This campaign ended with the strongest number ever registered in the history of elections in Colombia,” said Cepeda.
He got Trump’s endorsement
Caravans of de la Espriella supporters took to the streets of Bogota as the results were seen, many honking their horns and waving Colombian flags.
De la Espriella took part in a similar caravan in Barranquilla, with videos posted online showing him waving to fans in a special car fitted with bulletproof glass.
“For the first time, the people of Colombia have elected someone who is not part of politics, the politics that have destroyed this country,” said 19-year-old Juan Esteban Martinez.
De la Espriella, who is popular with critics on the far right, has received the endorsement of US President Donald Trump, who has said he will stop illegal immigration and crack down on crime and drugs.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was one of the first to congratulate de la Espriella following her win, writing on social media that “Colombia’s best days are coming.”
A victory for de la Espriella would mark a return to a conservative government in Colombia after four years under Gustavo Petro, the country’s first leftist president.
And adding Colombia to the growing list of Latin American countries that have shifted to right-wing leadership in recent years, many of those governments are also adopting tough security policies to deal with crime and gang violence.
Many of the security proposals signed by de la Espriella have drawn comparisons with those made by Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, who since 2022 has overseen a crackdown on gangs that has resulted in the arrest of more than three percent of adult males, but also a significant drop in violent crime.
De la Espriella proposed building 10 prisons in remote areas of the jungle, suggested he would pass a law giving himself extraordinary powers to lock up criminals and would carry out a massive bombing campaign against criminal gangs involved in drug trafficking “that will take over the country in 90 days.”
Frustration with ‘Total Peace’ policy
An outsider is likely to gain power by exploiting widespread frustration with Petro’s “Total Peace” policy. It sought to negotiate with armed groups but instead saw the number of active troops more than double, from about 13,000 in 2022 to about 27,000 by the end of 2025, according to the Colombian think-tank Ideas for Peace Foundation.
“A very special feature of Colombian politics is that whenever we have a peace agreement or peace talks with rebel groups or criminal organizations and those talks fail, we tend to go to politicians who promise a military approach and don’t want talks,” said Sandra Borda, an associate professor of political science at Colombia’s Los Andes University.
Colombia is about 54 times the size of El Salvador, and analysts warn that Bukele-style tactics may not translate easily to a country where security forces lack a uniform presence across a vast, often forested area. It’s a gap that many have warned could create conditions ripe for human rights abuses by state forces operating with little oversight.
De la Espriella’s team is “extremist, because they speak in a violent environment, they dream of campaigns of extrajudicial killings,” said Ann Mosquera, a supporter of Cepeda, just before the vote.
De la Espriella also proposed reducing the size of the state by 40 percent, drawing comparisons with Argentina’s President, Javier Millei, who has cut government spending by nearly 30 percent since taking office in 2023.
De la Espriella also promised to bring fracking to Colombia and restart oil and gas exploration.
If confirmed as the winner of the election, de la Espriella will take office on Aug. 7 four years.
