Far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella has accused President Gustavo Petro of wanting to “steal the elections.” He does so shortly after the president stated on social media that he has evidence proving an alleged electoral fraud, as he believes there are new and suspicious ID cards in a software of the Registraduría. For De la Espriella, this is a disinformation strategy about the electoral system, since electoral observation missions have not provided evidence that this has happened. But De la Espriella did not stop there; he also claimed that the Petro movement is organizing a social protest against him: he says he has “intelligence information, which I have already reported, according to which they are preparing ―and have already started taking to the streets― a social outbreak led by instrumentalized youth, the indigenous minga, and chaos.”
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The country must understand, as I have denounced before becoming a candidate, that Petro is taking step after step to steal the elections.
To do this, he resorts to all forms of struggle: he has created an environment of disinformation, casting a shadow of doubt over the transparency of the… https://t.co/4l7IJQXy8V
— Abelardo De La Espriella (@ABDELAESPRIELLA) June 2, 2026
De la Espriella adds in his long message on social media that the control bodies have maintained “complicit silence” in the face of other electoral irregularities. He alleges, for example, that on the left side there was “the largest vote-buying in the history of Colombia,” and that the government “has distributed public money to grease, indeed, a fraud based on the gigantic vote-buying in my region, the Atlantic Coast.”
Although Abelardo de la Espriella was born in Montería and lives in Barranquilla, and appealed to regional voting with the slogan that ‘coastals vote coastal,’ the Caribbean departments ―Guajira, Sucre, Bolívar, Atlántico, Córdoba― mostly voted for Iván Cepeda, the left-wing candidate, as they did four years ago for Gustavo Petro. However, although he did not win there, the far-right candidate achieved a considerable vote in the region.
So far, just as there is no evidence that the fraud Gustavo Petro points to occurred, there is also none that the largest vote-buying in history happened in the Caribbean, as De la Espriella now claims. But both the left and the right have heightened the electoral debate since Sunday, when Petro first said he did not recognize the results of the Registraduría’s preliminary count due to the alleged fraud, and De la Espriella claimed he would defend democracy “by reason or by force.” “Be very careful with what you are doing,” De la Espriella said to Petro this Tuesday. “The armed forces are loyal to the Constitution, not to you,” he added, echoing his Sunday speech, when he also asked the military to protect the elections.
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De la Espriella also criticizes that President Petro decided to openly campaign for Cepeda, as on Sunday, when he showed his vote for Cepeda to the cameras as he went to the polls. Or like last week, when he toured several Caribbean cities to talk about the importance of continuing his government.
The far-right candidate casts a dangerous shadow of doubt against the youth and indigenous groups who have taken to the streets to demonstrate in favor of Cepeda, following Sunday’s results. He alleges that they “are preparing a social outbreak,” a way to recall the 2021 protests against Iván Duque’s government, and De la Espriella has already promised to respond with ‘a firm hand’ if he wins the presidency.
In a campaign statement published after the long message on social media, De la Espriella reaffirms his accusations: “Petro and Cepeda have a plan to steal the presidential runoff.”
