BOGOTA, Colombia\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Political outsider Abelardo de la Espriella held a razor-thin lead in Colombia\u2019s presidential election with nearly all the votes counted Sunday in a runoff marked by people\u2019s fears of a renewed internal conflict.<\/p>\n
A victory by De la Espriella, who was endorsed by President Trump, would amount to an indictment of the policies of outgoing President Gustavo Petro, whose protege, progressive lawmaker Iv\u00e1n Cepeda, had promised to continue his agenda if he defeated his rival.<\/p>\n
De la Espriella, a business owner and lawyer who had never run for office, led with 49.7% of the votes, with 99.9% complete results released by electoral authorities. Cepeda earned 48.7% support. Election officials have not formally announced a winner.<\/p>\n
\u201cI appear before you tonight to announce the most important news of my life: The Colombian people have entrusted me with the supreme honor of serving them as their next president of the Republic of Colombia,\u201d De la Espriella told thousands of supporters as he stood behind bulletproof glass in the northern city of Barranquilla. <\/p>\n
\u201cI will govern for all Colombians. \u2026 There will be no retaliation, no persecution, because in a democracy there are no irreconcilable enemies,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Cepeda told supporters that his campaign considers the count \u201cunofficial and nonbinding\u201d and that his team will challenge results from more than 30,000 voting stations. No recount has flipped the results of a presidential election in Colombian history.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will not allow … the rollback of the social gains we have achieved,\u201d Cepeda said. \u201cWe will not allow democracy to be violated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Petro also vowed to challenge the outcome.<\/p>\n
People in the streets of Bogota yelled, \u201cPetro out! Petro out!\u201d and honked car horns.<\/p>\n
The candidates pitched voters on vastly different strategies to prevent the South American country from experiencing intractable violence, such as car bombs, kidnappings, disappearances and forced displacements, that Colombians lived with for decades.<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s winner will begin a four-year term Aug. 7.<\/p>\n
Tough-on-crime approach<\/p>\n
De la Espriella, 47, promised a heavy-handed approach to crime-fighting, including drug trafficking. He also said he planned to end Petro\u2019s attempts to establish parallel peace negotiations with multiple armed rebel groups \u2014 an effort that has largely failed under Petro \u2014 and build 10 mega-prisons, emulating Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele aggressive policies. Those tactics have lowered homicide rates in the Central American country but have resulted in reports of human rights abuses.<\/p>\n
De la Espriella, nicknamed \u201cEl Tigre,\u201d holds dual Colombian and U.S. citizenship. He\u2019s a Trump supporter and a member of the Republican Party.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have had an armed conflict and a drug trafficking problem for too long, and this has greatly polarized the country,\u201d retired economist V\u00edctor Duque, 72, said while wearing a national soccer team jersey at a voting center in the capital, Bogota. \u201cI believe it is one of the most important elections that has taken place in Colombia this century.\u201d<\/p>\n
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Presidents Javier Milei of Argentina and Daniel Noboa of Ecuador were among the political leaders to first congratulate De la Espriella.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Trump Administration looks forward to working closely with your incoming administration to advance regional security cooperation, end illegal immigration to the United States, and strengthen our economic ties,\u201d Rubio said on X. \u201cColombia\u2019s best days are ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe Won, BIG!\u201d Trump later said on on his social media platform.<\/p>\n
President again sows doubts in the results<\/p>\n
In the first round, Cepeda earned 41% of the vote, while De la Espriella finished first with 44%, according to official results. Petro, without evidence, sowed doubts in the results after Cepeda, who had consistently led polls ahead of the May vote, came in second. <\/p>\n
Yolanda Hern\u00e1ndez, 49, voted early Sunday before she started selling black ink pens outside a Bogota voting center. Clients, she said, buy the pens because ink cannot be erased from paper ballots, which reduces the possibility of fraud.<\/p>\n
Hern\u00e1ndez, who recycles trash for a living, voted for Petro in 2022 but cast her ballot for De la Espriella this time. Though she said that congressional gridlock was to blame for Petro\u2019s inability to deliver on promises meant to help the poor, she said Colombia cannot afford another four years under his vision for the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want change in Colombia because it\u2019s always the same violence, always the same thing,\u201d Hern\u00e1ndez said. Petro, she added, \u201csaid he was going to lower the cost of services, that he was going to lower the price of food, and everything is more expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin American Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Sunday\u2019s result shows the country \u201chas not shifted overwhelmingly or decisively\u201d against Petro\u2019s project or for De la Espriella\u2019s \u201ciron fist showmanship.\u201d Freeman added that the result also underscored Colombia\u2019s regional divisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s regional, not just ideological polarization; or rather, the two overlapping,\u201d he said. \u201cIronically, De la Espriella\u2019s iron-fist message performed best in the core of the country, not the periphery, which bears the brunt of Colombia\u2019s violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fighting between rebel groups<\/p>\n
The election comes 10 years after Colombia signed a historic peace pact with guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, that had offered hope to break the nation\u2019s vicious cycle of fighting between rebel groups and the government.<\/p>\n
But violence has since roared back, particularly as most rebel groups abandoned their ideologically driven fight for the financial benefits of drug trafficking. Colombia\u2019s illegal groups have more than 27,000 members. <\/p>\n
Last year, authorities recorded 14,780 homicides, the most since at least 2015 and driven by clashes among illegal armed groups. Among those killed was conservative presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe. Extortion has also soared, reaching 13,417 cases in 2025, more than double the number tallied in 2015.<\/p>\n
Cano and Su\u00e1rez write for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOGOTA, Colombia\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Political outsider Abelardo de la Espriella held a razor-thin lead in Colombia\u2019s presidential election with nearly all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64416,13540,8179,3130,150001,149997,48,52,51,47,50,49,149999,150002,24145,8111,150000,16220,4486,72,149998],"class_list":["post-369965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-accusation","tag-candidate","tag-colombia","tag-fraud","tag-guerrilla","tag-ivan-cepeda","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-multiple-illegal-armed-group","tag-official-result","tag-petro","tag-poll","tag-presidential-runoff","tag-violence","tag-vote","tag-year","tag-yolanda-hernandez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}