QATAR PERSPECTIVE

Doha approaches the Colombian election with the methodology that characterizes Al Jazeera Latin America: structural analysis, voices of the Global South, skepticism toward imported models. The Qatari paper publishes five different pieces in 24 hours and obtains several exclusive interviews. Jorge Restrepo, visiting professor, describes De la Espriella's rise as a "punishment vote against Colombia's long-established political class" — the formula becomes the structuring angle of the coverage. Al Jazeera also emphasizes Cepeda denouncing the "war on drugs" as a spectacular failure: "failed spectacularly," a phrase no Western Anglo media will pick up, but which sums up the Arab-Muslim position on the militarization of anti-narcotics.

Al Jazeera produces the most precise cartographic analysis. Laura Bonilla, deputy director of the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation, explains why De la Espriella won in 16 of 32 Colombian departments: "In more central areas and closer to the capitals, people prioritise security." Conversely, the coasts and border zones hit by armed-group violence voted Cepeda because they "place greater value on the socioeconomic issues" and have for four years received state development projects from the Petro administration. It is the classic inversion of the picture one imagines — the most violent zones vote for negotiated peace, not for the iron fist.

Al Jazeera also relays the most politically explosive formula of the night, attributed by Miguel Silva to the Tiger's campaign strategy: "Los Nunca" against "Los Siempre" — the Nevers against the Always. The proposed fracture is not right-left but state-beneficiaries versus those excluded from it. It is a cultural grammar that Doha immediately recognizes as akin to the "excluded vs elites" of Bukele in San Salvador and Milei in Buenos Aires. Qatari coverage is dense, scholarly, and offers something unique: an analysis of the Latin far right that passes neither through Madrid nor Washington, that takes Cepeda seriously as an intellectual ("long-time activist"), and that places the election in the broader context of the global diffusion of the Bukele model.