Far-right millionaire Abelardo de la Espriella wins Colombia’s presidential runoff

A Trump-admiring far-right millionaire lawyer. self-styled “outsider” has defeated a leftwing senator by a razor-thin margin to win Colombia’s presidential runoff, in an election that promises to mark a dramatic shift in the country’s decades-long armed conflict.

With 99.99% of ballots counted in the preliminary vote tally. the far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella had secured 12.96m votes, or 49.66%, just 250,830 more than the leftist senator Iván Cepeda, who received 12.7m votes, or 48.7%. A further 1.6% of ballots were cast blank.

The margin was narrower than in the first round three weeks ago. when De la Espriella had beaten Cepeda by 673,000 votes.

De la Espriella’s victory marks a sharp swing back to the right after four years under Colombia’s first. only leftwing president, Gustavo Petro, who was barred by the constitution from seeking re-election and therefore backed Cepeda as his successor.

The result is also being seen as further evidence of a wave of far-right candidates sweeping presidential elections across Latin America, after recent victories by Nasry Asfura in Honduras. José Antonio Kast in Chile, while Keiko Fujimori currently leads the vote count in Peru.

Like them. De la Espriella also received the endorsement of the US president, Donald Trump – although only after winning the first round. Trump shared news of the Colombian’s victory in a brief social media post, writing: “He Won, BIG!”.

In his victory speech in Barranquilla, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, where his law firm. campaign headquarters are based, De la Espriella promised to respect the constitution.

Although he said during the campaign. he would “disembowel” the left – a remark he later described as merely a figure of speech – he said that he will be the president of “all Colombians”.

“I want to speak especially to those who did not vote for me … Your rights. even if you did not vote for me, will be respected. Your opinions will be heard. You will never have to fear thinking differently,” he said from behind bulletproof glass, as he had throughout the campaign.

In a video posted by the US Republican congresswoman María Elvira Salazar after the result, De la Espriella said: “To solve Colombia’s problems, we need to build a very close alliance with the US, which is not only our main trading partner. also our most important strategic ally in the fight against organised crime.”

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, posted that he had spoken with De la Espriella to congratulate him: “The Trump administration looks forward to working closely with your incoming administration to advance regional security cooperation, end illegal immigration to the United States. strengthen our economic ties. Colombia’s best days are ahead,” he wrote.

Other Trump-endorsed leaders in Latin America congratulated the Colombian millionaire on his victory, including Argentina’s Javier Milei, Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa, Chile’s Kast. Paraguay’s Peña, as well as Fujimori, who is leading the vote count in Peru.

When Petro leaves office in about six weeks, only Mexico, Brazil – which will hold elections in October – Uruguay. Guatemala will remain under leftwing governments in the region.

In a post on social media, Petro alleged irregularities in the preliminary vote count. said that he would only recognise the outcome of the official scrutiny process, which is expected to take about two more days.

In the first round. the president also alleged fraud in the preliminary count without presenting evidence, drawing widespread criticism from election experts. The difference between the preliminary count and the official tally was less than 0.1%.

Cepeda also declined to recognise the preliminary results and said his team would challenge the results from 33,000 polling stations. “We will not allow democracy to be violated,” Cepeda said. No recount has flipped the results of a presidential election in Colombian history.

There were protests by Cepeda supporters; in Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, demonstrators burned US flags and clashed with police. In the capital, Bogotá, hundreds gathered outside Corferias, the country’s largest polling station. At a press conference on Monday morning, Cepeda urged his supporters to remain “calm. behave exemplarily” while awaiting the recount.

In his victory speech, De la Espriella called on Petro. Cepeda to respect the result: “Refrain from unleashing social unrest”.

In a campaign dominated by the violence that has once again engulfed the country. De la Espriella prevailed on a promise to adopt an iron fist approach against criminal groups.

Although security indicators remain far below the extraordinarily high levels recorded in the decades before the landmark 2016 peace agreement between the government. most of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the past year has been the most violent since then.

The president-elect, who will take office on 7 August, has pledged to build 10 maximum-security “mega-prisons”. kill criminals “like rats and cockroaches”.

Calling himself “El Tigre” (The Tiger). having never held public office, De la Espriella has vowed to make a complete break with Petro’s “total peace” plan of negotiating the dismantling of all criminal groups.

After four years of fits. starts – during which analysts say some armed factions took advantage of temporary ceasefires to continue expanding – the government managed to disarm the first criminal group only on Thursday, one with just 99 members, while experts estimate that more than 27,000 people belong to Colombia’s many criminal organisations.

The new president, by contrast, has promised a return to full-scale military confrontation that has done little to curb violence in the past,. said he will seek US support for airstrikes against coca plantations. Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine, and drug trafficking is the main driver of the country’s violence.

De la Espriella rose to prominence as a criminal lawyer representing the leaders of a group at the heart of the decades-long armed conflict: the paramilitaries, private armies created by drug traffickers. rightwing landowners to fight leftwing guerrilla groups.

He announced his presidential bid in July last year, a month after the rightwing presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot. fatally injured during a campaign event.

Though long associated with Colombia’s rightwing political establishment through his legal career. De la Espriella presented himself as an “anti-establishment” candidate, following the example of many other far-right leaders who have risen to power across the region in recent years.

His vice-president will be the economist José Manuel Restrepo, who served as finance minister under Petro’s conservative predecessor, Iván Duque. The president-elect said that Restrepo would be responsible for implementing the plan to shrink the state by 40%.

They will take office with a minority in congress. what many analysts see as a deeply divided country after the most polarised election in years, in which the two candidates failed to agree on holding a single debate and instead traded a barrage of insults.