Colombia’s next president will either be leftist senator Iván Cepeda or far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella, whose former clients include drug traffickers. The two will go head to head in the presidential runoff on 21 June, after no candidate won the 50% voteshare needed to automatically win the presidency at the first-round vote on Sunday. De la Espriella came first with 43.7% of the vote, closely followed by Cepeda with 40.9%.
De la Espriella’s rapid rise has been the major surprise of this year’s race to the presidency. The 47-year-old is a new figure in Latin America’s far right, who combines Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele’s brand of popular authoritarianism with Javier Milei’s radical economic liberalism in Argentina.
