Colombian presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella of the Salvadores de la Patria movement gestures as he speaks to supporters behind a bulletproof glass during his closing campaign rally in Buga, Valle del Cauca department, Colombia, on June 14, 2026. Colombia will hold the runoff presidential election on June 21. (Joaquin Sarmiento/AFP/Getty Images/TNS)
Originally published by
Bloomberg News
In a victory speech delivered from behind a bulletproof screen, on a barge in a Caribbean river estuary, Abelardo de la Espriella vowed to hunt down Colombia’s worst criminals. “Here is a tiger who defends the law with claws and teeth,” he told cheering supporters last month in Barranquilla, many dressed like him in the national soccer shirt. “We deserve a Colombia in which bandits are in prison.” De la Espriella is now the heavy favorite to be Colombia’s next president after a first-round vote in which he unexpectedly beat a leftist protégé of President Gustavo Petro. In a campaign marked by showmanship and provocations, voters rallied behind his plans to fight corruption and build mega-prisons for drug traffickers, which also helped win him an endorsement from Donald Trump. Some were also attracted by his pledges to slash taxes and government spending. Colombians, accustomed to decades of on-again, off-again peace talks with illegal groups, are fed up with a recent surge in violence as armed factions expand into new territory, fueled by record cocaine production. De la Espriella’s support reflects voters’ exhaustion with talks to appease the gangs, a desire to see them annihilated militarily and a bet that a political outsider is the best hope to change the system, according to Sandra Borda, a professor at Bogota’s Universidad de los Andes. “This country swings between seeking peace talks due to a terrible fatigue with the war, and then seeking war due to an infinite tiredness with peace talks,” she said. De la Espriella’s opponent in the June 21 runoff, Iván Cepeda, is one of the architects of President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” strategy. It’s brought seven militias to the negotiating table, though so far failed to bring significant demobilizations. Term limits mean Petro can’t run again, but Cepeda wants to continue talks with the groups. De la Espriella says he wants the military to bomb them into oblivion.
