Abelardo de la Espriella’s campaign: the ultra-conservative criminal lawyer who broke the right-wing

Abelardo de la Espriella had never run for an elected office before, and perhaps for that reason his bid for the presidency of Colombia has been a surprise to his rivals on the left, but above all to his friends on the right. Midway through last year, when he was just preparing to run and appeared with 1% voting intention in the polls, the right was divided between two favorites who no longer appear on the electoral map. One was Vicky Dávila, the former director of Semana magazine who promised to steal the far-right vote due to her fierce opposition to Gustavo Petro throughout the leftist government. The other was Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a loyal follower and friend of former President Álvaro Uribe, the holy grail of the right. But Uribe Turbay was assassinated while campaigning in Bogotá, and the assassination left his party in crisis. Meanwhile, De la Espriella was collecting signatures to become a candidate and began to grow slowly, stealing votes both from Dávila’s ultra base and from classic Uribistas. Now he arrives this Sunday as one of the top contenders to lead the country from the Casa de Nariño.

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The criminal lawyer launched his candidacy in November, with the show that has characterized his entire campaign: in front of thousands of people at the Movistar Arena in Bogotá, with the image of a tiger as the campaign logo and lots of fireworks. Since then, he has built a message that divides society between a us, “the never,” and a them, “the always,” and adds nationalist and militaristic slogans like “Firm for the Homeland.”

“I left a peaceful life in Florence [Italy] and returned to my homeland to save and rebuild it,” he told the audience then. His wife recently said they would live abroad again in case of defeat, while he assures that he came to Colombia to perform his “military service” against Petro’s left. That idea is reflected in his program: he promises the hard hand of Salvadoran Nayib Bukele against criminal groups, with the construction of ten mega-prisons; the cutting of the state in the style of Argentine Javier Milei; and a conservative agenda against abortion or LGBTI rights, supported by a religious discourse in which he promises the arrival of a “Miracle Homeland.”

Although he has defined himself as an outsider to politicians, for months he sought endorsement from former President Uribe’s party, who held dozens of meetings to achieve a single opposition candidate that would go ‘from Abelardo to Fajardo.’ But the criminal lawyer was shut out of his party. Among three senators and the father of the assassinated senator, the party chose Senator Paloma Valencia, from a moderate right. The more radical wing, represented by cattle leader José Félix Lafaurie, left the party for the ultra camp.

Still in December, when he was already leading the polls against other right-wing contenders, De la Espriella suggested sealing the coalition through a poll. But the other candidates, including Valencia and Dávila, closed that door on him, and preferred to choose among nine of them through a consultation to be voted on in the March legislative elections. Feeling excluded, the lawyer published a video made with Artificial Intelligence in which a tiger reads a letter to Uribe: going to a consultation, the feline says, “would disappoint those who believe in this project.” He announced that he did not want to go to the party to which he was not invited.

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Then came the trial by fire, on March 8. The candidate’s popularity, boosted by a successful and contemporary digital campaign, managed to scrape some votes from the Uribista party Centro Democrático so that the tiny ultra-conservative party Salvación Nacional, which endorses him, surpassed the electoral threshold and elected four senators and one representative in the Chamber for Bogotá. It was the first time De la Espriella measured his popularity at the polls, and it showed that the far right was mobilizing independently of Uribismo.

But at the same time the greatest threat to his candidacy emerged: Valencia not only won the right-wing consultation with 3.2 million votes, many more than expected, but the mechanism totaled almost six million votes. The senator then burst strongly into the polls, with the possibility of uniting the Uribista vote and conquering part of the center, those who voted in that same consultation for the person she designated as her vice-presidential running mate, Juan Daniel Oviedo.

But Valencia’s two-pronged bet did not fully materialize; the candidate and Oviedo publicly differed on issues such as adoption by same-sex couples or the possibility of appointing Uribe as Minister of Defense. De la Espriella, who had sent a message of calm to academic and business sectors with the appointment of his own running mate, former minister José Manuel Restrepo, grew again in the polls, to the point of tying in some with the perennial frontrunner Iván Cepeda, candidate of a unified left backed by Petro.

Abelardist influencers accused Valencia of being part of “the always,” and the candidate who received support from almost all traditional parties became the establishment’s choice. De la Espriella has been able to sell the discourse that he is the lone ranger of politics, despite entire parties and powerful clans also supporting him. He has also capitalized on the resonance of his discourse with the Petrism that talks about “the nobodies.” His voting intention does not fall despite showing he has more money than “the never,” despite critics recalling he was a lawyer for corrupt and mafia figures, despite some of those former clients now questioning him. Like Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential campaign, he seems scandal-proof. He only has to prove if he can defeat the left and reach the Casa de Nariño.

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