Updated May 29, 2026 at 6:00 AM EDT
PIEDECUESTA, Colombia – One of the main candidates in Colombia's first-round presidential election on Sunday is a combative criminal lawyer who flaunts his wealth and machismo, stars in his own music videos, and is promising a crackdown on crime.
Abelardo De La Espriella has steadily risen in the polls by portraying himself as a populist outsider, one who belongs to no political party and has never held elective office. All this, he insists, is a good thing.
"I'm not a politician," he told the crowd at a recent campaign rally in the northern Colombian town of Piedecuesta. "Politicians never keep their promises. But we entrepreneurs are true to our word."
De La Espriella is promising a sharp turn to the right after four years of left-wing rule under President Gustavo Petro, who is banned by the constitution from reelection. Amid a surge in guerrilla violence, kidnappings and extortion, De La Espriella says he will end ongoing peace talks with Colombian rebel groups, launch a military offensive, and build 10 "mega-prisons."
Businesswoman Belkis Serrano, who was at the rally, compares De La Espriella to Nayib Bukele, who is president of El Salvador and a close ally of the Trump administration. Bukele's authoritarian government has put more than 2% of El Salvador's adult population behind bars. With his close-cropped hair and goatee, De La Espriella bears a close resemblance to Bukele.
"We need a Bukele so that things change here in Colombia," Serrano says.
A De La Espriella victory would reinforce a recent shift to the right in Latin America where right- and center-right governments now control Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, and Paraguay. Right-wing candidates Keiko Fujimori in Peru and Flavio Bolsonaro in Brazil could add to this tally by winning presidential elections later this year.
De La Espriella, 47, first made his name, and his fortune, by providing legal counsel to controversial clients. One, for example, was the founder of a pyramid scheme that bilked thousands of Colombians out of their savings. Another was Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman who had close ties to ousted Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and was extradited to the U.S. last month for money-laundering.
He's been called "the devil's advocate" but it's paid off. He owns a Rolls Royce and flies in a private jet. A clotheshorse, he developed his own fashion brand – De La Espriella Style – a collection that includes luxury watches and sneakers selling for $1,300 a pair. He also stars in his own glitzy music videos in which he croons "My Way,", "Volare" and other songs in Spanish.
Though ostentatious, Bogotá political analyst Sandra Borda says that for many average Colombians De La Espriella embodies the dream of upward mobility.
"He has gathered a big fortune. He has his own airplane. The way he dresses. The way he's a showoff. People like that sort of thing," she says. "There's also the tropical ingredient. He sings. He dances. He has a colorful personality and that creates a lot of impact through social media."
Yet some are repelled by his off-color behavior.
Notoriously thin-skinned, De La Espriella delights in insulting journalists. When asked in a recent radio interview how he would attract female voters, he jokingly pointed to a photo of himself with an obvious bulge in the front of his pants.
"When he's caught in unscripted moments, that show his machismo, his disdain for opposition, his disdain for journalists, those character flaws will draw people away from his candidacy," says Sergio Guzmán, director of the Colombia Risk Analysis consulting firm.
Most polls show De La Espriella in second place behind leading candidate Iván Cepeda. He's a leftwing senator and protégé of President Petro who is, in many ways, the polar opposite of De La Espriella.
Austere and plainspoken, Cepeda, 63, lives in a modest apartment in Bogotá, eschews suits and neckties for sweaters, and looks like the university philosophy professor he once was. He pledges to continue with many of the Petro administration policies that have brought more indigenous and Afro-Colombians into government and have increased wages and benefits for the working class.
Ever since his father, a Communist Party politician, was gunned down by paramilitaries in 1994, Cepeda has been a fierce advocate for human rights and peace talks. In 2016, Cepeda helped convince Colombia's largest guerrilla group to sign a peace treaty. He's also been a key player in the Petro government's so-called Total Peace program. It aims to disarm a new generation of criminal groups involved in drug trafficking, extortion and illegal mining.
"I call on all the armed groups to follow the path of peace," Cepeda said at a recent campaign rally in the working-class town of Funza located just west of Bogotá.
But many analysts say the Total Peace policy has backfired. Mistakes by inexperienced government negotiators, like declaring ceasefires, allowed the criminal groups to expand their control over the countryside.
Partly as a result, the criminal groups have grown from 15,000 to about 27,000 armed fighters under the Petro administration, according to Javier Florez off the Bogotá-based Ideas for Peace Foundation. In the runup to the election, they have carried out massacres, bombings, and kidnappings, mostly in remote rural areas, that have soured many Colombians on negotiations. Yet should he win the presidency, Cepeda is promising more peace talks while offering no coherent military strategy to confront criminal groups, Florez says.
All this has provided an opening for Cepeda's presidential rivals. Although Cepeda has led the polls all year, he is unlikely to get more than half the votes in the first-round election because there are 13 candidates on the ballot.
That would set-up a June 21 runoff between Cepeda and whoever finishes second on Sunday. Most polls predict that will be De La Espriella. But another candidate, right-wing Senator Paloma Valencia, could catch up to him.
Valencia wants to become Colombia's first-ever female president and paints herself as a more mainstream conservative. In a speech this month, she called De La Espriella a "coward" for campaigning in a bullet-proof vest and mocked his macho pronouncements.
De La Espriella didn't seem to notice. As he ended his campaign rally in Piedecuesta, he touted his toughness by referring to the family jewels.
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