Far-right lawyer Espriella leads Colombia presidential vote, faces Cepeda in runoff

Far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella won the first round of Colombia’s presidential election on Sunday and will face senator Iván Cepeda in a runoff.

With 99.97% of ballots counted, Espriella secured 43.7% of the vote, just over 10.3 million votes, compared with 40.9%, or about 9.6 million votes, for Cepeda.

The two candidates will meet again on June 21.

Polls in recent weeks had shown Espriella gaining ground but still trailing Cepeda, who had held a solid lead for months.

Espriella appears to have drawn much of the support that had gone to rightwing senator Paloma Valencia, who finished with 6.9% after polling above 20% earlier.

Espriella, who calls himself el Tigre, celebrated the result in a video with his wife and children. “Compatriots, defenders of the homeland, more than 10 million Colombians placed their trust in el Tigre and joined the pack,” he said. “In 21 days, we are going to change the history of Colombia forever.”

President Gustavo Petro posted on X that he did not accept the preliminary results released by the National Civil Registry. Without evidence, he claimed the count included “800,000 additional people” and said he would wait for the official scrutiny process.

Former National Civil Registry head Juan Carlos Galindo Vácha accused Petro of spreading “disinformation.” He said the historical difference between preliminary counts and official results is less than 1%.

Cepeda echoed Petro’s claims of irregularities at certain polling stations but offered no evidence. He said the campaign would comment only after electoral commissions review the matter.

Espriella is an admirer of U.S. President Donald Trump, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Argentina’s Javier Milei. A criminal lawyer and businessman who has never held office, he built his campaign on a promise of total confrontation with criminal groups.

He advocates ending Petro’s “total peace” policy of negotiations, which Cepeda helped shape, and replacing it with an iron-fist approach modeled on Bukele’s mass imprisonment of gang members.

Valencia conceded and endorsed Espriella for the runoff. Election day passed without reported violence despite security concerns.