Abelardo de la Espriella, the lawyer who turned his campaign into personal marketing to the rhythm of reggaeton, almost surprisingly won the first Colombian presidential round against all odds. Now, on 21 June, Iván Cepeda awaits him in the runoff. Petro and the leftist candidate contest the numbers. In the background, the long shadow of Bukele and Trump.

A tiger that roars, bites and sings reggaeton

There is one detail that alone tells better than many political analyses what is happening in Colombia. Let’s start with the music, or rather the official song of Abelardo de la Espriella’s campaign, launched last September and gone viral in the months that followed. It is entitled El tigre de la patria and goes something like this: ‘Tigre que ruge y muerde, tigre que nada teme, tigre que deja huella, Abelardo de la Espriella’ (tiger that roars and bites, tiger that fears nothing, tiger that leaves its mark). Urban rhythm with African hints, something very close to that reggaeton that the same candidate, on other occasions, had called ‘chatarra de la música’ (musical rubbish). Consistency, evidently, is not the first thing one asks of Tigre.

And then there is the parallel jingle, Póngale la raya al tigre (put stripes on the tiger), animated tigers dancing on the screen before the candidate enters the stage amidst curtains of smoke, strobe lights and six bodyguards. He beats his chest, gives the military salute, sings the national anthem at the top of his lungs.

The 31 May surprise

Most of the polls gave the left as the favourite. The campaign of Iván Cepeda, candidate of the Pacto Histórico and designated political heir to outgoing president Gustavo Petro, even saw a victory in the first round as possible. The latest polls showed a head-to-head, with Cepeda slightly ahead, and a queue of Uribist candidates – above all Paloma Valencia, considered the rising star of the orthodox right – contending for second place.

The ballot boxes told a different story.
Abelardo de la Espriella got 10,361,499 votes, or 43.74 per cent. Iván Cepeda stopped at 9,683,549 votes, 40.91 per cent. Paloma Valencia, the supposed favourite of the traditional right, came out on top with a result close to six per cent. La manada (the herd), as El Tigre’s militant base has renamed itself, roared decisively louder than anyone else. And abstentionism was the lowest recorded in a Colombian presidential first round of the century.

In front of the crowd in Barranquilla, his stronghold, De la Espriella delivered the most aggressive speech of his campaign: ‘Vamos a defender la democracia por la razón o por la fuerza’ (We will defend democracy with reason or with force). And again, addressing the ten million who voted for him and whom he calls ‘los nunca’ (those of never): ‘Los que nunca hemos vivido de la teta del Estado’ (those who have never lived off the teat of the State).

Who El Tigre really is

To understand how one gets here, one has to take a step back. Abelardo de la Espriella is 47 years old, from Montería, and a criminal lawyer who has made a fortune defending inconvenient clients: among others, the Colombian-Venezuelan businessman Alex Saab – now detained in the United States as an alleged front man for Nicolás Maduro – and David Murcia Guzmán, the protagonist of the biggest pyramid scam in Colombian history. He has never held public office and makes a flag of it. ‘Cada peso de esta campaña ha salido de mi propio patrimonio’ (every peso of this campaign has come out of my own pocket), he repeats in every interview, presenting himself as a total outsider who has challenged the clase política tradicional.

To this biography, he has added a personal brand built with maniacal care: De la Espriella Style, a line that includes Defensor rum, Fratellone wine, Don Abelardo hats and a collection of men’s clothes called Siempre Avanti. Italianisms everywhere, overtly. A kind of Berlusconi in tropical sauce, with Bukele’s political script.

Three years ago he declared himself an atheist. Today he closes rallies invoking God. Three years ago reggaeton was trash. Today it is his soundtrack. Three years ago he was a lawyer. Today he is possibly the next president of Colombia.

The Bukele model, word for word

The political substance of De la Espriella’s project can be summed up in a formula: the Bukele model applied to Colombia. He has said it again and again in every interview, with an explicitness that leaves no room for interpretation. He promises to build ten mega maximum security prisons – the Colombian version of the Salvadoran CECOT – and to tackle drug trafficking ‘por la razón o por la fuerza’, within the constitutional framework but with an aggressive use of the Armed Forces and air power. He wants to reactivate fumigation and aerial spraying against illicit crops, suspended by Petro, and redefine the military alliance with the United States as a strategic axis.

In a recent interview with CNN, De la Espriella called what Colombia is experiencing a ‘pandemia de inseguridad’ (pandemic of insecurity). The difference with Bukele is that El Salvador has six million inhabitants and a compact geography. Colombia has fifty, is twice the size of France, has impenetrable forests and a network of armed groups – FARC dissidents, ELN, Gulf clans – that run a parallel economy worth tens of billions. Replicating the Salvadoran model here is not a change of pace: it is an experiment of enormous historical significance.

The other point of reference is openly Donald Trump. De la Espriella, after his victory, explicitly requested that ‘Estados Unidos y los partidos democráticos supervisen esta segunda vuelta electoral’ (that the United States and the democratic parties supervise this second round). A request that, from a candidate who has just won the first round, sounds more like a warning to the Petro government than a guarantee of transparency.

Cepeda and Petro: the contestation that divides

Because – and here the matter becomes explosive – the Petro government did not accept the results. Already on the night of 31 May, while the preconteo of the Registraduría Nacional was consolidating De la Espriella’s lead, the president intervened on X with a very harsh message: ‘Como presidente no acepto los resultados del preconteo de la firma privada de los hermanos Bautista’ (As president, I do not accept the results of the preconteo of the private company of the Bautista brothers).

He denounced alleged irregularities in the electoral software, spoke of algorithms changed three times in the last week and 800,000 cédulas added at the last moment. No evidence was filed, but a public and formalised suspicion by the highest office of the State.

Iván Cepeda went in the same direction, in more cautious but equally unequivocal tones. ‘Hoy obtuvimos 10 millones de votos mal contados en Colombia’ (Today we have obtained 10 million badly counted votes in Colombia ), he declared from the Salón Rojo of the Hotel Tequendama in Bogotá, speaking of a ‘desfase’ (misalignment) of 885,000 cédulas in the electoral census. ‘Estafador de estafadores’ (swindler of swindlers), he apostrophised his opponent, launching the challenge of balotaje.

The Federation of Colombian Departments replied to the president with a dry phrase: ‘La democracia, señor Presidente: ¡Se respeta!’ (Democracy, Mr President, is respected). A line of institutional tension that is likely to weigh heavily on the next three weeks.

What to expect from 21 June

The ballot on Sunday 21 June looks like one of the most polarised contests in recent Latin American history, and probably the most symbolically charged. On one side is an avowedly Bukelist and Trumpian radical right, determined to overturn Petro’s Paz Total agenda and militarise the response to drug trafficking. On the other a left that has governed four years with controversial results, but still capable of mobilising almost ten million votes in the first round.

Cepeda will have to catch up in the moderate centre and urban middle classes of Bogotá, where he held well but did not break through as hoped. De la Espriella will have to avoid further fuelling the perception of incoming authoritarianism, and here his promise to ‘defender la democracia por la razón o por la fuerza’ could backfire on him.