Colombia faces several days of maximum political tension after the far-right Abelardo de la Espriella declared himself the winner of the closest presidential elections in recent years, while the outgoing president, Gustavo Petro, denounced irregularities and demanded to wait for the official scrutiny before declaring the result closed.
With 99.65% of the tables counted in the pre-count of the National Registry, De la Espriella obtained 12,931,544 votes, equivalent to 49.65% of the total, compared to the 12,684,994 votes obtained by the official candidate Iván Cepeda, who reached 48.70%.
The difference between the two was just 245,738 votes, less than one percentage point, a much narrower margin than most polls and analysts had anticipated during the election campaign.
The tight distance has caused neither of the two candidates to rush to make the result definitive. While De la Espriella declared himself the winner, Cepeda called for caution and Petro went further by publicly denouncing alleged anomalies in the process.
“The tables without jury signatures must be challenged immediately. It is still not possible to know who the president is and there are many irregularities,” the Colombian president wrote on social networks.
Petro assured that there are electoral forms that would have been uploaded without the corresponding signatures and recalled that the pre-count has only informative value. As he insisted, it will be the official scrutiny, carried out by thousands of judges and notaries throughout the country, that will determine who will finally occupy the Casa de Nariño during the period 2026-2030.
From media lawyer to anti-system candidate
If the result ends up being confirmed, Colombia will witness one of the most surprising political eruptions in its recent history.
Abelardo de la Espriella, 47 years old, founded the Defenders of the Homeland movement just eleven months ago with a clear objective: to prevent the continuity of the left in power after the mandate of Gustavo Petro.
With no previous experience in public office, he built his entire campaign around an idea that he constantly repeated: precisely not having been part of the traditional political class was his main endorsement.
Known for years for his activity as a criminal lawyer and businessman, De la Espriella presents himself as a self-made leader, a declared admirer of Donald Trump and ideologically close to figures such as the Argentine president Javier Milei or the Salvadoran Nayib Bukele.
His speech has been based on promises of a tough line against crime, the fight against corruption, reducing the weight of the State and economic transformation of the country. During the campaign he assured that he would turn Colombia into a “miracle homeland”, taking growth models such as Ireland or South Korea as a reference.
A controversial character
The figure of the Bogotá lawyer is not exempt from controversy.
Before entering politics, he built a successful professional career defending clients with enormous media impact. Among them are the Colombian-Venezuelan businessman Alex Saab or David Murcia Guzmán, protagonist of one of the biggest financial scandals in Colombia.
Two decades ago he also participated in initiatives linked to peace processes with paramilitary groups, a past that was used by his adversaries during the electoral campaign.
His detractors also reproach him for statements considered sexist and a very polarizing political style, while his followers value precisely his direct language and his outsider image.
Abascal’s support
De la Espriella’s provisional victory was quickly celebrated by leaders of the international right.
One of the first to react was the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, who publicly congratulated the Colombian candidate and assured that citizens had said “enough to the narcosocialism of Petro and his successors.”
“Freedom, order, truth and the sovereignty of nations are making their way strongly in Latin America,” wrote the Spanish leader on the social network X.
De la Espriella himself responded by claiming that he had managed to overcome “the gun vote, the buying of votes, corruption and the usual ones.”
A country divided in two
Regardless of who is officially proclaimed president, the results reflect a deep political division in Colombia.
De la Espriella’s advantage is even less than half of that obtained during the first round held on May 31, which demonstrates the mobilization capacity that Cepeda achieved during the last weeks of the campaign.
With practically 26 million votes distributed between both candidates and a difference of less than 1%, the country is divided into two blocks of very similar size.
For this reason, while the lawyer’s supporters are already celebrating a historic victory for the hardest right, the Government insists that the decisive step still remains: the official scrutiny that, table by table and vote by vote, must confirm whether Abelardo de la Espriella really becomes the next president of Colombia.
