Colombia’s president-elect Abelardo de la Espriella has named 15 of the 18 ministers who will serve in his cabinet when he takes office on August 7.
The appointments by the right-wing criminal defense attorney underscore a shift away from the progressive agenda of incumbent President Gustavo Petro’s administration.
Here are the backgrounds of the appointments named so far, who are poised to shape the country’s politics for the next four years.
Rodrigo Lara Restrepo – Minister of the Interior
Lara is a lawyer and son of the assassinated politician and minister of justice Rodrigo Lara Bonilla. He has a political background, serving two terms as a congressman (2014-2022) and also heading the presidential anti-corruption body in 2006 under Alvaro Uribe. Most recently, he was de la Espriella’s campaign manager.
Lara’s appointment is particularly significant because de la Espriella enters office with only a small bloc of lawmakers from his own party, meaning his administration does not have a reliable congressional majority.
As interior minister, Lara’s main challenge will be to build legislative support by negotiating with other parties to secure backing for the president’s agenda. His previous experience in Congress and ties across Colombia’s political establishment are expected to play a key role in forging those alliances.
Miguel Gómez Martínez – Minister of Finance
Gómez Martínez is an economist and brother of the leader of Salvación Nacional (National Salvation), the official party linked to Abelardo’s candidacy. His past experience includes serving as Colombia’s ambassador to France, as congressman for the 2010-2014 legislative period, and as Deputy Comptroller General of the Republic, the second-highest official at Colombia’s government auditing agency.
His academic credentials include being the former dean of the School of Economics of Universidad El Rosario and former vice chancellor of the Universidad Sergio Arboleda. In the trade association sector, he served as president of Colombia’s Bank of Foreign Trade (Bancóldex), Fasecolda, the country’s insurance industry association, and Asocolflores, Colombia’s flower exporters association.
As finance minister, Gómez Martínez said the incoming administration will inherit “a country with significant political and economic challenges, the highest public debt in its history, and a massive fiscal deficit.” He will be tasked with fixing these problems.
Omar Bula Escobar – Minister of Foreign Affairs
Bula is an economist with 20 years of diplomatic experience at the United Nations, where he held executive positions at the World Food Program until 2012. After leaving the UN, Bula became a conservative digital activist. He has written three books and worked as professor at the Universidad Sergio Arboleda.
Bula has been a harsh critic of the UN and a devoted supporter of Trump on social media. He stated in an interview that the next presidential administration will not have an embassy in Cuba or Nicaragua, but proposed a “constructive” relationship with Venezuela under the interim presidency of Delcy Rodríguez.
Jorge Eduardo Mora López – Minister of Defense
A retired general of the armed forces, Mora served for 36 years before resigning in 2022. Since his retirement, Mora has been a frequent public commentator on national security and a consistent critic of Gustavo Petro’s ‘Total Peace’ policy of negotiating with armed groups.
Mora has pledged to restore security forces’ presence across the country and announced that, starting on August 7, his administration will reinstate arrest warrants against leaders of dissident factions of the FARC and the National Liberation Army (ELN), reversing the suspensions granted during peace negotiations.
Iván Cancino – Minister of Justice
Cancino is a litigator and university professor who has built his career representing prominent politicians, business leaders and public officials in high-profile corruption cases. He is long time friends with Abelardo de la Espriella, a fellow lawyer.
Despite the elected president’s campaign proposal, Cancino does not support eliminating the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, Colombia’s transitional justice body formed out of the 2016 peace deal with the FARC rebels. Rather, he has talked about redesigning it without extending its mandate.
Fabio Arjona Hincapié – Minister of the Environment and Sustainable Development
Arjona is a marine biologist who has served as executive director of Conservation International Colombia for over 20 years and was vice minister of the environment from 1997-1998. His approach to environmental issues is seen as prioritizing private-sector involvement over partnerships with local communities.
During the campaign, de la Espriella committed to developing fracking pilot projects toward commercial production, reversing the judicial and policy restrictions on fossil fuels under the Petro era.
Arjona has backed fracking while stating that the Ministry’s responsibility would be to “ensure that they are carried out according to the highest industry standards.”
“There is no insurmountable barrier to making responsible use of a resource that we need, among other reasons, to guarantee our energy security,” added the biologist.
Elsa Noguera – Minister of Transport
Noguera is an economist, former governor of the department of Atlántico (2020-2023), and the first woman to be elected mayor of Barranquilla (2012-2015). She also served as housing minister during Juan Manuel Santos’s administration (2016-2017).
Noguera represents a coastal political clan that supported Abelardo’s candidacy in Barranquilla, led by politician Fuad Char and his son Alex Char.
In a recent interview, she talked about speeding up project execution and restoring investor confidence through closer cooperation with private concessionaires.
Mauricio Gómez Amín – Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism
A lawyer and former congressman, Gómez held public office in the department of Atlántico and later served in Congress until May 2026, when he stepped down to become de la Espriella’s head of debate during the campaign.
As a congressman, Gómez promoted laws that encouraged the strengthening of the business sector and regional economic development. According to de la Espriella’s announcement, Gómez’s designation aims to “promote entrepreneurship, investment, domestic industry and Colombia’s huge tourism potential to create more opportunities”.
Viviane Morales – Minister of Education
Morales is a lawyer, former congresswoman during various terms, and first woman to be appointed Attorney General (2011-2012).
Morales’s political career has been closely tied to Christian religious movements, which has earned her criticism about her suitability for the lead position of this ministry. In 2016, Morales tried to pass a bill in Congress to revoke same-sex couples’ right to adopt children.
Although her plans for the institution are guided by the idea of “removing Marx from the classrooms and replacing him with God”, the next administration is legally bound, by a recent joint resolution, to incorporate Gustavo Petro’s comprehensive sexual education policy into the education system.
Jaime Andrés Beltrán – Minister of Housing
Beltrán is pastor of the Camino de Libertad Evangelical church. Member of the Bucaramanga City Council for three consecutive terms and later mayor of Bucaramanga, Beltrán was dismissed from office as mayor due to dual party membership. More recently, he was de la Espriella’s regional campaign manager.
Beltrán is currently involved in a fiscal accountability process regarding the loss of streetlights and other disused assets belonging to Bucaramanga’s public lighting system, valued at up to 40,000 million COP.
While Beltrán was mayor of Bucaramanga, the city changed part of its street lighting equipment. The discarded elements were taken from a municipal storage facility without a formal sale, melted and turned into cutlery and silverware by a scrapyard owner who presented himself as the representative of Oscar Ramírez, Beltrán’s brother-in-law. When asked in an interview if he was responsible for benefiting Ramírez, Beltrán denied any wrongdoing, saying the investigation should be left to prosecutors and the courts.
Juliana Gutiérrez – Minister of Sports
Gutiérrez is a business administrator and the sister of Medellín mayor Federico Gutiérrez, whose political movement Creemos gave support to de la Espriella in Antioquia during the campaign. Gutiérrez ran for senate in March representing Creemos, but she failed to win enough votes.
Gutiérrez addressed the family connection with the mayor of Medellín saying that, even though she shares the same values and political world view as her brother, she began participating in politics for personal reasons, including the loss of her infant son in 2012.
María Noemí Arboleda – Minister of Mines and Energy
Arboleda is an engineer and current general manager of the company XM, a company that operates Colombia’s national electricity grid and manages the country’s wholesale electricity market, where she has held various positions since 2005. Arboleda is also president of CIGRÉ Colombia, a professional association that promotes research, knowledge sharing and best practices in electrical engineering and power transmission, where she leads the company’s technical representation for the Ibero-American region. She was given the Women in Energy Award in 2021 and named one of the 100 most influential women in Colombia by the newspaper La República in 2022.
When announcing Arboleda’s appointment, de la Espriella highlighted her lack of political experience, echoing his campaign slogan “Los Nunca”, which referred to his pledge to appoint people who had never previously held political office.
Indalecio Dangond Baquero – Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development
Dangond is a business administrator with almost 40 years of experience in the agricultural sector. Founder and president of Open Loans, he previously served as financial coordinator for the agribusiness component of USAID’s MIDAS (More Investment for Sustainable Alternative Development) program.
The new minister will have three priorities: to expand access to banking services for 2.5 million small-scale farmers, formalize land ownership titles, and accelerate the construction of irrigation systems, according to a press release by de la Espriella’s team.
Alexandra Falla Zerrate – Minister of Information and Communications Technology
Falla is the current president of the Association of Ibero-American Educational and Cultural Television Networks (ATEI) and director of the Colombian Film Heritage Foundation.
She served on the National Television Board of the National Television Authority, was deputy manager of Communications and Customer Service, academic coordinator of the School of Social Communication at the Universidad Externado de Colombia, and chief operating officer of Canal Capital.
Falla pledges to lead a Ministry that works across all national departments: from health and public safety to transportation systems, strengthening Colombia’s digital transformation.
Paola Holguín – Minister of Culture
Holguín is a long-time senator, serving three consecutive terms under Álvaro Uribe’s right-wing Centro Democrático party since 2014. During her stint, she enacted a law designating the Antioquian carriel – a type of satchel – as national cultural heritage, and coordinated efforts to expand the Museum of Anthropology in Jericó, Antioquia.
From 2003-2010, Holguín worked as an advisor to Uribe when he was president as well as serving as a political affairs officer at Colombia’s embassy in Mexico from 2008-2009 and an advisor to the Mexican presidency from 2011-2012. She holds a degree in security and national defense.
Will the Cabinet Meet Colombia’s Gender Quota Law?
Colombia’s quota law requires women to hold at least 50% of the highest decision-making positions in the executive branch. In the 18-member Minister cabinet, that means at least nine ministries must be led by women.
However, there are already 10 male ministers appointed. Failure to comply with the gender quota law may result in administrative sanctions, including suspension or removal from office.
With less than three weeks until his inauguration, Abelardo is soon expected to announce the final three ministerial positions: Health and Social Protection; Labor; and Science, Technology and Innovation.
