Bogota, Colombia – Colombian presidential candidate Ivan Cepeda formally conceded defeat to prominent right-wing rival Abelardo de la Espriella on Wednesday, following a tight runoff election.
Cepeda had earlier recognized the legitimacy of preliminary results on Sunday, in which de la Espriella led by less than 1%, but said he would wait for official, legally binding vote tallies before accepting defeat.
“I decided to accept the outcome of this process, which shows that Abelardo de la Espriella is the new president of the Republic,” Cepeda said in a live-streamed address on Wednesday.
Although the vote verification process is not yet complete, the National Registry, the election monitoring body, said Tuesday that the preliminary count from Sunday was “99.997 percent” accurate after review by municipal judges. The ballots now must be verified at departmental and national levels.
Within Cepeda’s camp, there have been doubts about the legitimacy of the voting process. Outgoing President Gustavo Petro — who was deeply involved in the leftist candidate’s campaign — has publicly alleged fraud and foreign interference before and after the election. “Electoral manipulation has been proven; I cannot say for sure that what was uncovered guarantees an electoral victory [for Cepeda], but it is real,” Petro wrote Monday.
For months, the president warned of vulnerabilities in the vote-counting software and has clashed with the National Registry. His distrust largely stems from the 2022 legislative elections, where his Historic Pact coalition recovered nearly half a million votes after a recount. That recent memory led Petro and many of Cepeda’s supporters to believe the 250,000-vote gap between Cepeda and de la Espriella on Sunday could be reversed. However, the National Registry has recorded high accuracy in both the preliminary count for March’s legislative elections and the first round of the presidential election on May 31.
Petro also argued that Washington’s interference in the election undermined the final result, as President Donald Trump endorsed Abelardo, breaking tradition. “The direct interference of President Donald Trump nullifies the elections in Colombia,” Petro wrote in a post on X on Tuesday.
Cepeda’s concession, however, appeared to distance him from the president, who founded the Historic Pact movement. “This suggests some rift between Petro and Cepeda. While Petro’s term is ending, Cepeda may become the opposition leader,” said Sergio Guzman, director of Colombia Risk Analysis, a political risk consultancy.
Cepeda, who is now expected to lead the Historic Pact party in the Senate, delivered a conciliatory speech Wednesday morning: “I do this as an act of democratic responsibility, to contribute to harmony, peace and dialogue among Colombians.”
