Continuity or change? What to know about Colombia’s run-off election
Far-right Abelardo de la Espriella and leftist Ivan Cepeda compete for the presidency with starkly different platforms. Voters in Colombia are preparing to head to
Far-right Abelardo de la Espriella and leftist Ivan Cepeda compete for the presidency with starkly different platforms. Voters in Colombia are preparing to head to the polls for the second time in less than a month to decide who will be the South American country’s next president. But the two candidates competing in Sunday’s run-off offer starkly differing visions for the country’s future. One candidate, left-wing Senator Ivan Cepeda, has pledged continuity with the government of outgoing President Gustavo Petro, who championed anti-poverty measures and negotiations with the country’s armed groups. The other, far-right outsider Abelardo de la Espriella, has promised a break from establishment politics, including a swerve away from negotiated solutions and towards more military-led responses to crime and violence. De la Espriella emerged with a small advantage over Cepeda in the first round of voting on May 31, earning 43 percent of the vote compared with the senator’s 40 percent. Margins are once again tight going into the second round, but pre-election polls show de la Espriella ahead of Cepeda. Who are the two candidates, what issues are animating the election, and what can we expect during the second round of voting? We answer those questions and more in this brief explainer. When is the election? The run-off vote will take place on June 21. What happened during the first round of voting? Cepeda had been leading in the pre-election polls ahead of the May 31 general election. But in an upset, de la Espriella came in first place with 43.7 percent of the vote. Cepeda trailed with 40.9 percent. Neither, however, secured a majority of 50 percent or more to avoid a run-off race. The surprise outcome led President Petro to accuse private firms of manipulating the election results in favour of the right-wing candidate. “As president, I do not accept the results of the preliminary count,” Petro wrote on social media shortly after the results were tallied. Initially, Cepeda appeared to echo Petro’s scepticism, but he later conceded that there were no irregularities in the first round of voting. The European Union’s Election Observation Mission also affirmed that there was no evidence of malfeasance in the election. What can round one tell us about round two? De la Espriella is believed to have an advantage coming out of the first round of voting.
In the general election, right-wing voters were split between different candidates, including de la Espriella, conservative Senator Paloma Valencia and centrist Sergio Fajardo. Now, in the second round of voting, de la Espriella is expected to consolidate some of the voters who previously cast their ballot for Valencia and Fajardo. The first round also revealed a geographical divide between the regions that supported Cepeda and the regions where de la Espriella won. Majorities in coastal and border regions, as well as in the capital Bogota, voted for Cepeda. But central departments, which have been hard hit by Colombia’s internal armed conflict, tilted towards de la Espriella. Who is Ivan Cepeda? Senator Ivan Cepeda is running as the nominee for the country’s left-wing governing coalition, known as Historic Pact. Cepeda has promised to continue with Petro’s efforts to reduce social and economic inequality. But one of the prevailing issues in this year’s election has been security, as Colombia continues to contend with its si decade-long internal conflict. Petro has sought to defuse that conflict through negotiations with armed groups, as part of a policy called “Total Peace”. While Cepeda has pledged to reform “Total Peace”, he has backed the policy overall as a needed departure from decades of militarised approaches and rights abuses. Petro’s approach, however, has faced criticism for failing to stem the conflict, with incidents of violence on the rise in recent years. The International Committee of the Red Cross, for instance, said the number of people displaced by violence doubled in the last year. But Cepeda has brought his own experiences with Colombia’s conflict to the election. His father, also a senator, was assassinated in 1994 in a shooting that was widely believed to be carried out by government-backed paramilitary groups. Afterwards, Cepeda dedicated himself to advocacy on behalf of the victims of “state crimes”. As a senator, Cepeda also accused a powerful former president, Alvaro Uribe, of collaboration with right-wing paramilitary groups. His allegations launched a years-long court case that briefly saw Uribe convicted of bribery and witness tampering, before the verdict was overturned. Who is Abelardo de la Espriella? Facing off against Cepeda is a candidate from the far right who is, in nearly every way, his opposite. Criminal defence lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella has no previous political experience, though he has used that fact to his advantage, portraying himself as a successful businessman.
The BriefWire