COLOMBIA PERSPECTIVE

Colombia tilted Sunday night into a political sequence no one had prepared for. At 4 PM Bogotá time, polling stations closed; by 6 PM, El Tiempo was displaying early trends; by 10 PM, the count was unambiguous: Abelardo de la Espriella took 10,118,924 votes (43.77%), Iván Cepeda 9,451,732 (40.88%), Paloma Valencia 6.9% — less than half the 3.2 million votes she had collected at the inter-party primary in March. The Bogota Post summed up the country's stupor: "few had on their prediction slates" a result in which the outsider exceeded by 13 points the upper end of polls.

The electoral map drew two Colombias. El Tiempo detailed that De la Espriella had won in 16 of the 32 departments, including Antioquia, the Uribista stronghold, where he scooped 1,723,406 votes (54.4%) — the most humiliating episode for Paloma Valencia, who only carried two of the department's 125 municipalities. In Medellín, mayor Federico Gutiérrez accused Petro of having "aires de dictador" and addressed him directly: "Stop threatening." Cepeda won Cali (51.4%), the Pacific and Caribbean coasts, the outer Amazon — and Bogotá, the only inland province to vote left (41% Cepeda, 37% De la Espriella, 9% Valencia).

The institutional shock began before midnight. Petro posted on X that he "does not accept the results of the preconteo by the private company of the Bautista brothers," owners of Thomas Greg & Sons, the logistics contractor for the National Registry. He alleged — without evidence — an 800,000-identity gap between the official census and the counting software. Electoral management director Rafael Vargas had reminded everyone as early as April that "all final data are recorded in physical acts, by hand." Former Registrar Juan Carlos Galindo qualified Petro's outburst as "disinformation." Cepeda himself spoke Sunday night of "10 million miscounted votes," then walked it back Monday: "we have not found any evidence or indication of flagrant irregularities." The capital is entering three weeks of campaigning with a contested president, a weakened ruling candidate, a Tiger threatening to have "the people rise up" against the institutions, and 3.6 million orphan votes that will decide June 21.