Anti-Cartel Candidate 'El Tigre' Leads First Round of Colombia's Presidential Election

On the night of May 31, 2026, Abelardo de la Espriella — a 47-year-old criminal defense lawyer who has never held elected office — stood before supporters in Bogotá and claimed a first-round victory that most pollsters had not predicted. With 99% of ballots counted, de la Espriella, who campaigns under the nickname "El Tigre" (The Tiger), had secured 43.7% of the vote, roughly 10.3 million ballots [1][2]. His nearest rival, left-wing Senator Iván Cepeda, trailed at 40.9% with 9.7 million votes [1]. Conservative Party candidate Paloma Valencia finished a distant third at 6.9% [3].

Neither candidate cleared the 50% threshold required for outright victory. Colombia now faces a June 21 runoff that will determine whether the country lurches sharply to the right or continues the left-wing trajectory set by President Gustavo Petro [2].

Source: Al Jazeera

Data as of May 31, 2026CSV

A First-Round Lead in Historical Context

De la Espriella's 2.8-percentage-point margin over Cepeda is narrow by the standards of recent Colombian first rounds — but the raw scale of his support is not. In 2022, Petro won the first round with 40.3% against Rodolfo Hernández's 28.1%, a gap of more than 12 points [4]. In 2018, Iván Duque took the first round with 39.1% to Petro's 25.1% [4]. De la Espriella's 43.7% is the highest first-round vote share by any Colombian candidate in recent cycles, and it came from a candidate who was polling in the mid-30s just weeks before the vote [5].

Historical precedent offers mixed signals for the runoff. Petro won his 2022 first round and then won the runoff. Duque won his 2018 first round and also won the runoff. But in both cases, the margin of victory narrowed considerably in the second round [4]. With Valencia having immediately endorsed de la Espriella and urged voters not to let "the new communism" continue, the right appears more consolidated than the left heading into June 21 [6].

Who Is 'El Tigre'?

Abelardo Gabriel de la Espriella Otero was born in 1978 in Montería, the capital of Córdoba department in northern Colombia — a region long dominated by paramilitary groups and cattle ranching elites [7]. He studied law at Sergio Arboleda University and the University of El Rosario, later earning a master's degree from Spain's Nebrija University [7]. In 2002, he founded De La Espriella Lawyers, a firm with offices in Colombia and the United States that specialized in high-profile criminal defense [7].

His legal career made him a media figure long before his political candidacy. De la Espriella built a reputation on combative courtroom theatrics and a willingness to take controversial cases [7]. For the 2026 race, he founded the Defenders of the Homeland party and ran on a platform that borrows freely from three foreign leaders he openly admires: Donald Trump, Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, and Javier Milei of Argentina [8].

His policy proposals include constructing 10 mega-prisons, expanding military operations against armed groups, ending all peace negotiations with guerrilla organizations, authorizing police to shoot protesters deemed violent, supporting the right to bear arms, and withdrawing Colombia from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the United Nations [8][9]. He has stated he would authorize bombing drug trafficking operations — "downing planes and shooting boats" — a position that Al Jazeera noted constitutes "a form of extrajudicial killing, effectively denying suspects the chance of defending themselves in a court of law" [1].

The Paramilitary Question

De la Espriella's past connections to Colombia's paramilitary networks represent one of the most contentious dimensions of his candidacy. During the 2002–2005 peace negotiations between the government of President Álvaro Uribe and the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), de la Espriella served as an advisor to the paramilitary group [7]. A foundation he created, FIPAZ, received more than 1.3 billion Colombian pesos from the AUC and organized university forums featuring former AUC commanders, including Salvatore Mancuso [7][10].

The Colombian Attorney General's office, under Mario Iguarán — described by Colombia Reports as "a close friend of de la Espriella" — closed an investigation against him for conspiracy and money laundering in 2009 [10]. De la Espriella's campaign website reportedly created a Wikipedia-style biography that omitted multiple scandals involving the candidate and his law firm [10].

These connections have not prevented his political rise. In a country where paramilitary demobilization was largely completed two decades ago but successor criminal groups remain powerful, de la Espriella's supporters have treated his AUC links as ancient history. His critics argue the connections raise questions about which interests a de la Espriella presidency would actually serve.

The Security Crisis That Fueled His Rise

The most straightforward explanation for de la Espriella's performance is the security situation that developed under President Petro's "Total Peace" (Paz Total) policy. The numbers tell a stark story.

Source: The City Paper Bogotá

Data as of Jan 15, 2026CSV

During the first three years of Petro's administration (August 2022–August 2025), Colombia recorded 40,663 homicides — an average of 37 per day. This represents a 7.59% increase over the 37,795 homicides recorded during the equivalent period of Iván Duque's presidency, and an 11% increase over Juan Manuel Santos's second-term figure of 36,646 [11]. The departments of Bolívar (+870), Magdalena (+811), and Atlántico (+803) saw the sharpest increases compared to the Duque era [11].

Beyond homicides, the broader security picture deteriorated across multiple indicators. Kidnappings rose by approximately 80% and extortion reports increased by at least 27% between 2024 and 2025 [12][13]. The number of active armed fighters in Colombia's conflict more than doubled under Petro, rising from roughly 13,000 in 2022 to approximately 27,000 by the end of 2025 [12]. Coca cultivation reached an estimated 253,000 hectares in 2023, while eradication efforts covered only about 20,000 hectares [14]. The U.S. State Department expressed concern about the "effectiveness of the Petro administration's current counternarcotics policies" [14].

Colombia also remains the country with the second-largest internally displaced population on Earth — 7.1 million people, behind only Sudan's 10.1 million, according to UNHCR data [15].

Source: UNHCR Population Data

Data as of Dec 31, 2025CSV

Armed groups took strategic advantage of Petro's ceasefire negotiations to expand territorial control and boost profits from drug trafficking, illegal mining, and extortion [12]. The ceasefire with the National Liberation Army (ELN) collapsed in August 2024, and the ELN resumed attacks against security forces and infrastructure, including an assault on a military base in Arauca that killed and injured more than 20 people in September 2024 [12]. ACLED data found a "Total Peace paradox": while Petro's policy reduced some forms of direct violence in the short term, armed groups grew significantly stronger [13].

The Steelman Case for 'El Tigre'

Dismissing de la Espriella's support as mere authoritarian populism requires ignoring the scale of policy failure that preceded it. Colombian voters who cast ballots for El Tigre can point to concrete, measurable deterioration: more homicides than under any recent president, a doubling of armed combatants, collapsed ceasefires, and record coca cultivation [11][12][14].

The "Total Peace" approach rested on a theory that negotiating simultaneously with all armed groups — guerrillas, paramilitaries, and criminal organizations — would reduce violence. The Council on Foreign Relations declared the policy "dead" in a 2025 analysis, noting that partial agreements repeatedly broke down and armed groups used negotiation periods to consolidate power [16]. The International Crisis Group documented how local peace efforts failed to translate into national security improvements [17].

For voters in departments like Valle del Cauca and Cauca — where violence has been "especially intense" and represents the worst escalation since the 2016 Peace Deal [18] — de la Espriella's promise of direct military action against criminal organizations is not abstract ideology. It is a response to the daily experience of extortion payments, kidnapping threats, and territorial control by armed groups that the current government's diplomatic approach failed to dislodge.

The Bukele Model: Promise and Price

De la Espriella's mega-prison proposal and hardline rhetoric invite direct comparison to El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, whose state of exception — declared in March 2022 — produced dramatic reductions in homicide rates alongside systematic human rights violations.

Source: WOLA

Data as of Mar 1, 2026CSV

The scale of Bukele's crackdown is without recent precedent in the Western Hemisphere. El Salvador's prison population tripled from roughly 39,000 in 2021 to over 115,000 by 2025, giving the country the highest incarceration rate in the world — 1.8% of the total population, or 3 out of every 100 men [19][20]. Some 85,000 people have been detained since the state of exception began [19].

The human rights costs have been extensively documented. Amnesty International concluded there is "systemic use of torture" in Salvadoran prisons, including beatings, electric shocks, prolonged solitary confinement, and deprivation of food and medical care [21]. The human rights organization Cristosal determined that "torture has become a state policy" [19]. An estimated 350 people have died in state custody since 2022 [19]. Fewer than a third of the roughly 72,000 people jailed under the policy are believed to have had any documented ties to gang-related violence [19]. Bukele himself acknowledged that 8,000 innocent people had been detained and subsequently released [19]. A new law lowered the age of criminal responsibility for gang-related crimes from 16 to 12 years, and more than 1,000 children have been detained [19].

NBC News reported that Bukele pushed through life sentences in a nation that has imprisoned 1% of its population [20]. WOLA (the Washington Office on Latin America) published a three-year assessment concluding that the state of exception had produced both "mass incarceration and democratic deterioration" [22].

Could a Bukele-Style Crackdown Work in Colombia?

Security analysts have expressed skepticism about transplanting the Salvadoran model to Colombia. Foreign Policy noted that "Bukele's anti-crime model has its limits" and that the conditions enabling it in El Salvador — a small country with geographically concentrated urban gangs — differ fundamentally from Colombia's situation [23].

Colombia's criminal landscape is vastly more complex. The country faces not street gangs but well-armed guerrilla organizations (the ELN, FARC dissident factions), narcotrafficking networks with international reach, and successor paramilitary groups — all operating across a territory five times the size of El Salvador with difficult jungle and mountain terrain. Global Americans argued that applying the Bukele strategy "in countries such as Colombia or Peru could produce an outcome closer to what occurred in Mexico than in El Salvador" [24].

Colombia's constitutional framework also imposes constraints that Bukele did not face. The Colombian president serves a single four-year term with no reelection — a restriction enshrined in 2015 constitutional amendments specifically to prevent the concentration of executive power [25]. The attorney general's office operates independently, the Constitutional Court has historically blocked executive overreach, and Congress would need to approve the legislative foundation for mega-prison construction and expanded detention powers [25]. Declaring a Bukele-style permanent state of exception would face immediate judicial challenge.

Former military commanders and independent security analysts have argued that executive power alone cannot defeat Colombia's organized crime networks. The success of Plan Colombia — the early-2000s U.S.-backed counternarcotics campaign — required cooperation between political elites, military leadership, the judiciary, and international partners [24]. A unilateral presidential crackdown without institutional buy-in, these analysts argue, would produce spectacle without sustained results.

The Runoff Equation

The June 21 runoff will pit two starkly different visions for Colombia against each other. Cepeda, a 63-year-old senator and human rights activist whose father was assassinated during political violence in 1994, has pledged to continue Petro's Total Peace negotiations, pursue agrarian reform, and maintain judicial independence [26][27]. He selected indigenous leader and Senator Aida Quilcué as his running mate and has advocated for an independent foreign policy and Latin American integration [26].

Cepeda faces structural disadvantages. Valencia's immediate endorsement of de la Espriella consolidated the right-wing vote [6]. The two right-wing candidates had reached a pre-election agreement to support whichever one advanced, aware that "fragmentation on the right could benefit the government-backed candidate's chances" [6]. Together, de la Espriella and Valencia captured over 50% of the first-round vote.

De la Espriella, for his part, has signaled alignment with the Trump administration, stating: "Let the United States of America and democratic parties monitor" the runoff [2]. CNN reported that the runoff "could redefine relations with the US," particularly given Petro's tense relationship with Washington during the Trump presidency [28]. De la Espriella has promised to improve cooperation with the United States on counternarcotics — a reversal of Petro's more adversarial stance [28].

What Happens If El Tigre Wins?

If de la Espriella wins the runoff, his flagship anti-cartel measures would face a phased timeline shaped by institutional realities. Within the first 100 days, he could issue executive orders to halt all ongoing peace negotiations with armed groups — a step requiring no congressional approval. He could redirect military operations from ceasefire enforcement to offensive campaigns against criminal organizations [9].

The mega-prison program, however, would require congressional appropriation, land acquisition, environmental reviews, and construction timelines that stretch well beyond a single presidential term. Legal experts have noted that expanded detention powers would need to survive Constitutional Court scrutiny [25].

Internationally, the reaction has been mixed. The Trump administration would likely welcome a more cooperative counternarcotics partner. Regional human rights bodies — including the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, from which de la Espriella has proposed withdrawing — would almost certainly oppose mass-incarceration policies [8]. A withdrawal from the Inter-American system would place Colombia alongside Venezuela as one of the few Latin American states outside that framework.

The Uncomfortable Middle

The Colombian election exposes a tension that extends across Latin America: between the documented failure of negotiation-first security policies and the documented costs of repression-first alternatives. Petro's Total Peace was built on a defensible theory — that decades of military solutions had not ended Colombia's conflict — but produced worsening conditions by multiple measures. De la Espriella's platform responds to real suffering but proposes tools whose deployment in El Salvador has produced systematic torture, wrongful imprisonment of tens of thousands, and the deaths of hundreds in state custody.

More than 23.6 million Colombians voted on May 31 [1]. In three weeks, they will choose again. The stakes are not abstract. Colombia has 7.1 million internally displaced people, the second-highest figure on Earth [15]. Its armed groups have doubled in strength in three years [12]. Its coca fields cover a quarter-million hectares [14]. Whether the answer to these problems is a lawyer who once took money from paramilitaries and now promises to build mega-prisons — or a senator who pledges to continue a peace process that has so far produced more fighters and more deaths — is the question Colombian voters must weigh without the luxury of a good option.