Confused about the 2026 Colombian presidential elections? We’re here to help you with a set of cheat sheets on the top candidates so you can follow the local news. First we’re looking at Abelardo de la Espriella of Defensores de la Patria.
Who is Abelardo de la Espriella?
Abelardo de la Espriella hails from Montería, which he makes great play of. He was actually born in Bogotá, as well as studying in various universities here. He rose to fame as a defence lawyer, eventually setting up his own firm, De La Espriella Lawyers Enterprise. Their clients have been varied (more of that later).
He has a colourful background alongside his legal activity, releasing two albums of classical and traditional music as well as launching De La Espriella Style, his menswear line. He also has his fingers in other pies, including rum, wine and coffee, several books and a foundation to help impoverished kids.
A former atheist, he saw the light in the pandemic and came around to Catholicism, which is convenient for winning votes in a deeply religious country. He holds Italian and US passports. He takes pride in his appearance, often suited and tidily-bearded but switching to sombreros vueltiaos or guayaberas when appropriate.
While he has a varied and successful background in business, he has no experience at all in government, either at local or national level. He is leaning into that, taking the mantle of the outsider candidate and promising to do politics differently. Courting controversy is second nature for this bullish and outspoken candidate.
Is he polling well?
He started strongly towards the end of last year, then seemed to have dipped as we moved into springtime. Since the March elections though, he’s picked up the pace again and is peaking again at just the right time.
He’s now ahead of Paloma again with most pollsters and stands a good chance of making the second round, where he faces a strong challenge against Cepeda. His incredibly divisive rhetoric and persona mean that he doesn’t match up easily in a one-on-one.
Like many populists in the caudillo mould, he splits opinions – while he wins a lot of hearts and minds, so too does he turn a lot of people against him. Very few people are neutral on Abelardo, which means he could struggle to win the more centrist voters, even against Cepeda. Expect voto en blanco to do well if he’s in the second round.
What’s his campaign like?
Pick your adjective depending on how you view him generally: controversial, innovative, problematic, fierce, strong, crass, outspoken. What’s unarguable is that it is very much focused on him, features a lot of show and spin and is extremely light on detail.
Very much in the vein of a Trump or Bukele, two key influences he acknowledges himself, he positions himself as the outsider candidate compared to the professional politicians in the race. This has not only been successful elsewhere, but almost took Rodolfo Hernández to the presidency four years ago.
Interestingly, Abelardo de la Espriella is in one way openly following a very similar line to the leftists he claims to hate. He is courting “los que nunca” against “los que siempre”, fitting his position as the outsider candidate. His promises often revolve directly around shaking everything up.
So what’s in his manifesto then?
You can read it for yourself online, or what is there at least. It’s barely a manifesto and more a collection of ideas, positions and wishes. He focuses heavily on law and order with a generous side serving of efficiency savings. Quite how any of this will get done or whether it’s viable is often unclear.
First thing on the agenda is that he’s tough on crime. He’s proposed 10 megacarceles in the Bukele mould, a ‘primera linea’ of reservists and veterans and a new bloque de búsqueda for barrios. He targets a 30% reduction in gender-based violence and 40% cut in feminicides. That involves an accelerated 24/7 judicial process in 72 hours maximum.
More widely, he wants to reform and better fund the armed forces in order to both establish state control of territory and enforce the state monopoly on arms. That carries over into his stance on armed groups. He wants to eliminate 330,000 hectares of coca farms using any and all tools available to him. That means spraying, manual elimination, express recuperation of proceeds of crime and so on.
The mano dura is also set to come down on politicians. He’s fiercely anti-corruption, which he defines broadly. He plans to start with Ecopetrol and then clean out state organisations of their links to “narco-trafficking, corruption and bad management”.
Politicians and administrators that are not corrupt won’t be safe, either. He promises zero tolerance for ineptitude and inefficiency. He wants results within 100 days and those with empty hands will be told to sling their hook. Ambassadors have been told they need to promote the country, not just shoot whisky on the public purse.
Tax avoidance is also on the radar – Abelardo de la Espriella wants to use AI to radically improve DIAN’s processes and deal with widespread avoidance. Subsidies will also be revised to make sure they are going to the right places.
He wants to recover energy self-sufficiency and to restart drilling and exploration as well. Gas is his main focus, although rare earth mining is also highlighted, alongside reform of the costly ElectroCaribe. A main driver is drawing a clear line between legal and illegal mining.
The national budget will also benefit from the efficiency savings – merging or abolishing agencies he sees as redundant such as the Ministerio de Igualdad. That’s part of a shock plan to save around 3.1% of GDP.
With those savings, the aim is to get the deficit to -4.8%(!) within the first year, falling to under 3.5% or lower by 2030. Dovetailing with that is a promise to anchor the debt/GDP ratio at no higher than 55%. All this will require annual growth of at least 3% with 5%+ targeted.
On education, there is to be greater focus on technology, as well as a ‘virtual university’ and free computers in schools. Unsurprisingly, details are limited. A STEM program specifically aimed at girls will be set up to deal with the tech gender gap.
Rural communities are a key part of his voter base and he’s promising 600,000 new jobs outside cities as well as 100,000 young people to receive education on improved farming methods and use of tech. 2 million hectares are to be delivered to the people.
Rounding up, there will be COP$125bn aimed at co-investment or seed capital for creative projects; mass sterilisation of stray animals to reduce populations and 200,000 carers to be given subsidies.
Who is he running with?
José Manuel Restrepo, the closest thing to an aristocrat that a two-century-old republic can have. He claims direct descendency from revolutionary hero Francisco de Paula Santander. In sharp contrast to Abelardo, he’s a classic buttoned-down conservative.
He served under Duque as Ministro de Hacienda following the botched intent at fiscal reform, having previously been at Comercio. Outside of politics he has been rector of three different universities, most notably the Rosario, his alma mater alongside Bath and the LSE.
However, given that Abelardo de la Espriella loves the limelight, his undercard is not a key part of this campaign. While the other two real candidates have genuinely strong vice-presidential candidates, Abelardo is doing all the heavy lifting himself.
What’s all this El Tigre stuff?
Abelardo understands the importance of branding, and this is a key part of his appeal. He says that the big cat represents courage, ferocity and independence, all of which are qualities he identifies with. In a country where blankets featuring tigers are a staple of many homes, this is a good brand to have.
Tigre in Colombia can refer to tigers or jaguars, both of which he uses, though the former are more common. That means video screens with dancing tigers on them, tiger-print shoes up for sale and a whole lot more. He’s often to be seen wearing tiger-print clothes.
Cepeda’s running mate Aida Quilcué has publicly asked him to stop using jaguars as part of this, claiming they hold a special significance for Indigenous Colombians. Abelardo de la Espriella has predictably ignored that.
Any skeletons in his closet?
Sort of. There’s certainly a great deal of controversy, but a lot of it he simply leans into and doesn’t see as problematic at all. That’s true of personal attacks on Paloma Valencia, as well as frequent homophobic and sexist outbursts.
It’s less true of his past as a criminal defence lawyer, an area that often makes him quite touchy. He has represented some pretty shady characters, including Álvaro Uribe himself. Jorge Pretelt and David Guzmán are just two high-profile clients accused of corruption that de la Espriella has defended.
In fairness, his firm has also taken on some genuinely important defences, most notably Natalia de la Ponce and Rosa Elvira Cely. However, even this is disputed, with family members taking to Instagram to dispute his take on that and suggest it was more about financial interest.
Then there’s the outstanding allegations that the firmas he collected in order to be able to run were improperly registered. He won 5 million, more than any other Colombian, of which 3 million were ruled invalid. That still leaves him comfortably over the threshold, but raises questions about his support.
So, can he succeed?
Yes, he can. It’s nowhere near guaranteed that he’ll make the second round, of course, and he absolutely has the potential to do or say something that will torpedo his campaign. However, he’s a maverick and is campaigning well, which makes him unpredictable.
He is offering easy solutions to complex problems, but that’s often popular with the electorate. Get past the rhetoric and he identifies a lot of key problems and his proposals could be a good thing. He just doesn’t make it clear exactly how this is going to happen.
More to the point, Abelardo de la Espriella represents the outsider position compared to everyone else: he really is not a professional politician like them, for good or for bad. Again, that’s popular with many voters after decades of incompetence from technocrats.
Comparisons with Trump in the USA or Bukele in El Salvador are clichéd, but they stand up. He frequently flirts with sexism and homophobia while mocking opponents, but claims innocence, he promises a hard line on crime and he avoids clarity over his proposals. Both those candidates won comfortably with similar electorates to Colombia.
If he gets to the second round, he could win due to a dislike of the other candidate, as that will almost certainly be Cepeda. In that case, there could be a lot of voters holding their noses to vote either for or against him. At the moment, that’s a coin flip.
