“With God’s help, in 18 days I will be the president of Colombia,” says presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, who speaks confidently in his first interview after obtaining the highest vote last Sunday: more than 10 million votes in his favor in the first round. The far-right candidate speaks with the magazine Semana, a media friendly to his campaign, for more than two hours to present his government program. But above all, to talk about President Gustavo Petro and the left-wing presidential candidate, Senator Iván Cepeda, in the same tone he has used throughout the campaign. “My enemies are Cepeda and Petro, and I will face them, I will punish them as they deserve,” says the candidate who has promised to “gut the left.”
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In the tense polarization the country is experiencing, Abelardo de la Espriella does not see the left leaders as political opponents with whom he can have differences in a respectful debate. “I cannot lower the tone in front of Petro and those who support him in the destruction of Colombia,” he responded when asked if he was going too far. “One does not confront crime and banditry with nice words, and with soft and pitiful tones,” he added. “Bandits only understand that language, and force.”
Thus, for example, when he talks about the alleged fraud that Petro denounces, he calls the president a guerrilla fighter. “He is disregarding the norm, the law, the constitution, he cares nothing about institutions because he is still a guerrilla fighter, he is still a subversive,” he says about Petro, who demobilized more than three decades ago from the M-19 guerrilla. He calls Cepeda a “puppet” who works with Petro and for “narco-terrorism.” And about the possibility of making a transition with them, if he wins the elections, he also does not see a peaceful transition.
“I believe there will be no transition: moreover, we must be very alert to the destruction of documentation, which is what those bandits will try,” he added. He does not doubt that he will denounce them once he is in the presidency: “I will see what they stole,” he announces. “Have absolute certainty, dear Colombian people and dear defenders of the homeland, that I came to confront, defeat, and punish that mafia whose leader is Gustavo Petro.”
But the one he attacked the most on this occasion was the Minister of the Interior, Armando Benedetti, who was key in Petro’s 2022 campaign. Abelardo de la Espriella assures that petrismo will seek to buy votes in the Caribbean, and then gave wings to the rumor that Benedetti ― who is from Barranquilla, the city where the ultra candidate resides ― might be the one to promote that purchase. “He is a criminal, of the worst kind, and they are calling him to buy votes,” says De la Espriella.
When a Semana presenter mentions that some in petrismo call Benedetti “the electoral beast,” De la Espriella says he is called that because “he used to hit women, or because he is an abuser of women.” Benedetti had a gender violence complaint filed, and then withdrawn, by his partner. He has another gender violence complaint filed by the current ambassador to the United Kingdom, Laura Sarabia, whom he insulted by phone with phrases like “you are worth nothing.”
De la Espriella even said, about those who accuse him of being misogynistic, that “they are the same people who defend Benedetti going to Cepeda’s campaign, when Benedetti is an abuser.” De la Espriella then took the opportunity to apologize to a reporter from the radio program Piso 8, to whom he asked to zoom in on a photo of his genitals. This after a judge forced him to apologize for insinuating that citizens vote for him because of the size of his penis. “I do not agree with the ruling, but I have to comply,” said De la Espriella. “If there was any offense, I reaffirm my apologies: within the framework of a political satire program, as we say in the Colombian Caribbean, I was joking around. I withdraw those expressions, I regret it.”
De la Espriella appears in the Semana interview shortly after the President of the United States, Donald Trump, gave strong support to his campaign with a message on social media. With North America on his side, the candidate again threatened Benedetti: “I tell Benedetti to stay still, because here he has been evading justice for a while, but he is in the sights of the United States.” He also invited the United States to punish those who buy votes, but with the so-called Clinton list, which points to people linked to drug trafficking.
“I am formally requesting the United States government to verify, with their special envoys, this situation: to identify the politicians of the Colombian Caribbean who want to buy votes,” he said, “so that the United States proceeds to include them on the OFAC list; and to revoke visas for them and their families.”
He does not have the same vengeful tone against Uribista Senator Paloma Valencia, he said, who was his competitor for right-wing votes. He says he has not spoken with her, but when the senator congratulated him by text message, he replied: “Thank you very much, no hard feelings of any kind, first Colombia.” He does not see it negatively that she is seeking a coffee with former center candidates to see if they join De la Espriella’s campaign, but he remains firm in his discourse that he is an outsider, even though many parties now support him. “There are no political agreements: neither bureaucratic nor contractual,” he assures.
