Three days after Colombians went to the polls, Iván Cepeda acknowledged Abelardo de la Espriella’s victory in the presidential election.
Electoral authorities have not yet formally certified the final result, a process expected to conclude later this week. Yet politically, the dispute has effectively come to an end. After days of challenges, reviews, and scrutiny of the vote count, the candidate of the governing coalition accepted the outcome yesterday and announced that his movement will continue its work from the opposition.
In his concession, Cepeda reiterated concerns about foreign interference, vote-buying, and the use of artificial intelligence to spread disinformation during the campaign. He also pledged to continue organizing across the country and defending the political project that mobilized millions of Colombians. “We will not leave the Colombian people alone,” he said, adding that he would not let Colombia become “a protectorate of the United States.”
The election is over. A new reality begins now.
For months, Colombians were told they were living through a national crisis. De la Espriella built his campaign around that premise, arguing that four years of Gustavo Petro had left the country on the wrong path. He promised to restore order through a hardline security agenda, end Petro’s Paz Total policy of negotiating with armed groups, and repeatedly portrayed Iván Cepeda as an ally of the FARC, the ELN, and other criminal organizations. His message was straightforward: Colombia needed to be rescued. The country his administration is about to inherit is more complex than that narrative suggests.
Colombia enters this transition with inflation under control, poverty below its recent peak, exchange-rate stability, and continued economic growth. None of this means the country’s challenges have disappeared. Violence remains a serious concern in many regions. Inequality persists. Public trust in institutions remains fragile. Millions of Colombians continue to struggle to make ends meet.
The next administration will not be governing a country in collapse. It will be governing one with functioning institutions and significant unresolved problems. Delivering meaningful improvements under those conditions may prove more difficult than winning an election.
Campaigns operate in the world of promises. Governments operate in the world of constraints. Many of De la Espriella’s most ambitious proposals, from his security agenda to broader institutional reforms, will require legislative approval, cooperation from other branches of government, budgetary resources, and, above all, political consensus. He will take office facing a fragmented Congress, active social movements, independent courts, and a country where nearly half of voters chose a different path. Governing, therefore, will require more than winning. It will require negotiating and building legitimacy among people who did not vote for him.
One of the first tests of that challenge may come in Colombia’s relationship with Washington.
De la Espriella is a dual U.S.-Colombian citizen and a registered Republican who lived for years in Miami before becoming a U.S. citizen in 2023, a naturalization process that required him to swear an oath of allegiance to the United States. Before entering politics, he built one of Colombia’s most prominent law firms, known for representing some of the country’s most controversial clients, including Alex Saab, a businessman linked to the Maduro government who was extradited to the United States, and David Murcia Guzmán, who was convicted in the largest pyramid scheme in Colombian history.
His ties to Washington are already being tested before he has even taken office. Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno recently said he met with De la Espriella and discussed illegal migration. According to Moreno, De la Espriella “immediately agreed that ANY Colombian citizen claiming asylum should return to Colombia,” a position Moreno framed as part of a broader U.S. policy that treats immigration as “a privilege, not a right.”
It is an early signal of how closely Bogotá’s foreign and migration policies may come to mirror Washington’s, and how much room there will be for a Colombian government to disagree with the country its president once swore allegiance to and with which he maintains deep personal ties.
Those questions extend beyond foreign policy. For many Colombians who did not vote for De la Espriella, the election result represents more than a political defeat. During the campaign, he embraced “iron fist” rhetoric, at one point saying he would “gut” the Colombian left and warning that he would not tolerate protests he considered disruptive to public order. Press freedom organizations have also documented a pattern of lawsuits and legal actions against journalists who have reported critically on him.
Combined with his close political alignment with the Trump administration and his past representation of controversial clients, these factors have fueled concerns among many Colombians about the future of political dissent, press freedom, the rights of vulnerable communities, and the country’s sovereignty. Those concerns are not limited to a fringe. They reflect the anxieties of millions of Colombians who supported a different vision for the country.
For Cepeda and his supporters, the election carries a different lesson.
Despite defeat, more than twelve million Colombians backed a progressive project, and that constituency did not disappear when the election ended. It remains a standing force in Colombian politics, one that Colombian society can continue to count on to carry forward the fight for labor rights, peace implementation, environmental protection, and social justice, the causes that nearly half of those who voted chose to support. The challenge for Cepeda’s coalition now is to keep that movement organized, engaged, and effective from the opposition, not just at the ballot box every four years.
The months ahead will reveal whether the incoming administration can translate campaign slogans into effective governance, whether it can lower tensions rather than deepen them, and whether it can meet expectations that are often easier to raise than to satisfy.
Global Exchange’s work does not end with an election. We will continue standing alongside our partners in Colombian civil society, defending democratic space, amplifying the voices of communities most affected by political decisions, and monitoring the challenges that lie ahead