Four years of Gustavo Petro's presidency have left Colombia with record cocaine production, collapsed peace talks, a mounting corruption trial, and a democratic scare over the May 31 election results. Now, with three weeks to go until the June 21 runoff, the verdict is being written in political terms as well: virtually the entire Colombian political class — plus the President of the United States — has coalesced against any continuation of the Petro project.
Trump Weighs In, and Washington Gets an Ambassador
On the evening of June 2, Donald Trump posted his endorsement of Abelardo de la Espriella on Truth Social. "Congratulations to Colombian presidential candidate El Tigre, Abelardo de la Espriella, a smart, strong, and tenacious leader," Trump wrote, adding his "Complete and Total Endorsement" and calling the June 21 runoff "crucial" for Colombia's relationship with the United States, according to Colombia One and Reuters. De la Espriella responded within minutes, promising a US-Colombia alliance "unlike any Colombia has ever had."
The endorsement came 24 hours after Trump formally nominated Kentucky entrepreneur Nathaniel "Nate" Morris as the next US Ambassador to Colombia, submitting the name to the Senate on June 1 — the morning after De la Espriella won the first round. The timing was conspicuous: Colombia has had no resident US ambassador since 2021, operating under a succession of chargés d'affaires throughout the entirety of Petro's term, according to The City Paper Bogotá. Morris, 45, is the founder of Rubicon Technologies and a prominent Trump political ally who was asked by the president to abandon a Kentucky Senate bid in exchange for the ambassadorial post. His appointment signals that Washington sees a window of opportunity in Colombia's political transition and intends to fill it.
Petro, who has spent four years clashing with Washington over drug policy, migration, and sanctions, offered a characteristically combative reply: "When one country interferes in another country's decisions, freedom dies," he posted on social media, per Reuters. The irony of a president who spent months baselessly claiming his own election was fraudulent now invoking democratic norms against a foreign endorsement was not lost on Colombian commentators.
A Coalition That Should Terrify Petrismo
The Trump endorsement was the international capstone of what had already been an extraordinary domestic consolidation. In the 48 hours following De la Espriella's first-round win, the anti-Petro bloc assembled itself with remarkable speed.
On election night, Cambio Radical — founded by former Vice President Germán Vargas Lleras — announced its support for De la Espriella explicitly to "prevent the re-election of Gustavo Petro's failed political project," per El Tiempo. The Conservative Party declared that De la Espriella represented "millions of citizens who demand a firm course for Colombia," according to El Colombiano. On June 2, the Partido de la U — historically a centrist party allied with various governments — called De la Espriella "the outsider who can save democracy" and warned against anyone "assaulting the elections," a thinly veiled reference to Petro's fraud narrative, according to Infobae.
Alvaro Uribe, the former president who founded Centro Democrático and remains Colombia's most electorally potent right-wing figure, formally committed his party's machinery to the campaign. Former defense minister Juan Carlos Pinzón, a centrist who had backed Paloma Valencia, called the choice binary: "narco-communism or the option of Abelardo de la Espriella," per Infobae. Former Finance Minister Mauricio Cárdenas — a technocrat with no affinity for the hard right — announced he would vote for De la Espriella to ensure "responsible management of public finances," and analysts noted to Pulzo that his endorsement was a deliberate signal of stability to markets and investors.
Paloma Valencia, who took 6.92% of the first-round vote as the Centro Democrático candidate, announced her support immediately after results came in. Her roughly 1.6 million votes represent a block that, if transferred cohesively, would make De la Espriella close to unbeatable. Former candidate Miguel Uribe Londoño (0.12%) and Sergio Fajardo (4.26%) have not yet formalized endorsements but Fajardo's centrist constituency is being actively courted.
On Cepeda's side, Alianza Verde endorsed him in April — but the decision was contested internally, with Green representative Catherine Juvinao and others invoking a "conscientious objection" and refusing to comply, per Infobae. The FARC-successor party Comunes backs Cepeda, but its parliamentary representation is about to expire.
The Runoff Math and the Petro Ceiling
The pre-election polls dramatically underestimated De la Espriella's first-round performance, which should make Cepeda's camp nervous about any model that places him ahead for the runoff. With 100% of ballots counted, De la Espriella received 10,361,499 votes (43.74%) against Cepeda's 9,688,361 (40.90%), according to the Registraduría Nacional.
Post-first-round runoff polling tells a mixed but increasingly right-leaning story. AtlasIntel, which proved the most accurate firm in the first round, now shows De la Espriella at 50.3% against Cepeda at 42.6%, according to the Spanish-language Wikipedia aggregator of polls. A Guarumo/El Tiempo simulation published just before the first round projected De la Espriella winning the runoff by 3.6 points. More critically, the same firm found that 42.9% of respondents said they would "never vote" for Cepeda, compared to only 20.2% who said the same about De la Espriella — a massive rejection ceiling that new endorsements cannot dissolve.
There is also the matter of Petro's approval. An AtlasIntel survey found Petro at 56.7% disapproval before the election, with rejections reaching 80.3% in the Amazonia and Orinoquía regions, per Perfil. Iván Cepeda has run explicitly as Petro's continuation — promising to preserve his legacy on peace talks, redistribution, and health reform. In a country where the outgoing president is disapproved by nearly six in ten voters, that is not a campaign platform; it is an anchor.
What a De la Espriella Victory Would Mean
De la Espriella, 47, is a millionaire lawyer and political outsider from Barranquilla who has never held elected office. His platform is aggressively anti-establishment: a 40% reduction in the size of the public sector, resumption of aerial coca fumigation suspended under Petro, construction of ten El Salvador-style maximum-security prisons, and a security alliance with the United States and Israel, per Courthouse News Service. He has promised to "reclaim territories" controlled by guerrilla and criminal groups within his first 90 days.
The policy reversal on drugs alone would be seismic. Petro's de-emphasis of eradication coincided with Colombia retaining its title as the world's largest cocaine producer. His "Total Peace" strategy — which sought negotiations with every armed actor simultaneously — ended in catastrophe: ELN talks collapsed after the January 2025 Catatumbo massacre; FARC dissident negotiations broke down as drone attacks escalated; and total armed group combatants grew roughly 85% since 2017, now exceeding 25,000, according to established reporting. De la Espriella's promise of military pressure, backed by closer US cooperation, would mark the sharpest security U-turn since the Uribe era.
Petro's Parting Moves
As the coalition against him solidifies, Petro is using his final weeks in office to push two agendas. The first is his constituent assembly petition: launched publicly on May 1 as a signature-gathering drive, it aims to collect 2.5 million validated endorsements for submission to the incoming Congress on July 20, when new legislators take their seats, according to Colombia One. The incoming Congress — whose March 8 elections produced a polarized result with the right holding a collective majority — will almost certainly bury the proposal, but Petro has pledged to make its submission "his final act as president."
The second is the ongoing effort to cast doubt on the election itself. Petro's fraud claims have already been demolished by the Registrar, 143 EU observers, and a judicial scrutiny count showing 99.94% agreement with preliminary results. His candidate Cepeda acknowledged finding no "irregularities of sufficient dimension to speak of fraud." Yet as long as Petro commands a social media megaphone and a loyal base, the narrative will persist — injecting institutional uncertainty into a transition Colombia can ill afford.
The June 21 runoff will determine whether Colombia turns the page on four years of democratic erosion, security deterioration, and fiscal mismanagement. The breadth of the coalition now aligned against continuity — from Uribe to Vargas Lleras to Partido de la U to Donald Trump — suggests that the electorate's verdict on the Petro era has already been rendered. The question on June 21 is only the margin.