Uribe loses 24-year grip on Colombian right as De la Espriella advances to runoff

For nearly a quarter century, Álvaro Uribe shaped the Colombian right. The former president who governed from 2002 to 2010 had won two consecutive elections by commanding margins in the first round—a feat no other politician in the country had matched. He remained the gravitational center of conservative politics long after leaving office, backing successors, leading the opposition, and defining the agenda of his Democratic Center party. On Sunday, that era ended.

With nearly all ballots counted, lawyer Abelardo De la Espriella claimed the first-round lead with 10.3 million votes, or 43.72 percent, securing his place in a runoff against leftist senator Iván Cepeda. Paloma Valencia, the senator Uribe had personally championed and campaigned alongside, finished third with 1.6 million votes—just 6.92 percent. The collapse was stunning. Polls had predicted far better results. Uribe and Valencia had voted together that morning in their respective regions, confident in the machinery they had built. By evening, the machinery had failed them.

The fracture within Uribe's coalition had been visible for weeks, though few predicted it would be this severe. Valencia had selected Juan Daniel Oviedo, a former director of Colombia's national statistics agency, as her running mate. Oviedo is openly gay and had supported the 2016 peace accord with the FARC—the very agreement that Uribe had opposed with unrelenting force and continued to oppose. The choice split the Democratic Center. Party militants expressed their anger publicly. Daniel Briceño, the most-voted congressman in March's legislative elections, said bluntly on a podcast that Valencia had held the presidency in her hands until Oviedo arrived. He noted that the 3.2 million votes Valencia had received in the congressional race matched almost exactly the Democratic Center's Senate total—suggesting those voters had abandoned her when the ticket shifted toward the center.

Two prominent female senators from the Democratic Center who had considered running for president themselves—Paola Holguín and María Fernanda Cabal—did not campaign for Valencia. Neither did journalist Vicky Dávila, who had participated in Valencia's coalition. On the day Valencia won the primary, Dávila announced she would support her. By Saturday, Dávila was writing on social media that she felt not abandonment but disappointment and sadness, even indignation. She called on the opposition to unite against Cepeda, whom she described as the greatest threat to freedom and democracy in Colombia.

Uribe's political dominance had rested on a particular moment and a particular persona. In the early 2000s, he was Colombia's most popular president, winning in 2002 and 2006 with first-round victories that seemed to reflect genuine public consent. He had then leveraged that popularity to elect Juan Manuel Santos as his successor in 2010. When Santos later broke with him over the peace process, Uribe became the opposition's voice, a role he held until 2018. He then backed Iván Duque, who governed until 2022, when Gustavo Petro won the presidency. Uribe became Petro's fiercest critic.

But De la Espriella, known to supporters as "the Tiger," had tapped into something Uribe's machine could not contain: broad citizen frustration with Petro's government. De la Espriella's movement, called Defenders of the Homeland, had aggregated that discontent into a first-round plurality. The victory was not ideological in the traditional sense. It was a rebuke to the incumbent and, implicitly, to the aging structures of the right that Uribe had built and maintained.

What happens next remains uncertain. Uribe and Valencia have not yet stated their position on the runoff. Political logic suggests they will eventually support De la Espriella, despite their differences, to prevent Cepeda—Uribe's longtime antagonist—from reaching the presidency. But the enthusiasm that once surrounded Uribe's endorsements has plainly dimmed. The question now is whether the right can coalesce around a new leader, or whether the fractures exposed on Sunday will widen in the weeks ahead.