A victory all the way down to the wire and a really proper flip. The businessman Abelardo de la Espriella gained the second spherical of the presidential election on Sunday in Colombia. This anti-system lawyer supported by Donald Trump promised a “new period” for the nation, hit by the violence of armed teams.
A novice in politics, this 47-year-old millionaire businessman beat the left-wing senator with 49.7% of the vote, in comparison with 48.7%. Ivan Cepedathinker and human rights defender. “The Tiger”, as his supporters name him, says he entered politics to stop Colombia from being “destroyed” by the left. He guarantees safety after a marketing campaign marked by guerrilla bombings and the assassination of a presidential contender.
« Outsider »
The person who will take workplace on August 7 made himself generally known as a lawyer by defending former paramilitaries, drug traffickersfootballers and a person behind an enormous pyramid fraud. Denouncing the political class, he led his marketing campaign as an “outsider”, having given up his luxurious life within the Italian metropolis of Florence to save lots of “the homeland”, managing to oust the normal proper.
Of American and Colombian nationality, he’s the goal of many questions on the origin of his sudden fortune. The businessman grew up within the north of Colombia, main, in accordance with him, a “Tom Sawyer” existence, between fishing and video games within the countryside. In his race for the presidency, he assured that he had “the balls” to manipulate with an “iron fist” the nation, the world’s main producer of cocaine undermined by an inside armed battle for greater than six a long time.
First measures
Abelardo de la Espriella skilled a meteoric rise with a virulent speech towards the guerrillas and Gustavo Petrooutgoing president whom the Structure prevented from working for a second time period. Married and father of 4 kids, he proposes safety measures harking back to the anti-gang battle of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and a drastic discount in state spending within the type of the Argentinian Javier Miley. Throughout his marketing campaign, he notably promised to construct mega-prisons the place inmates can be fed “bread and water”, to bomb drug trafficking camps with the help of america and Israel and to cut back the state equipment by 40%.
Favorable to head-on opposition to armed teams linked to drug trafficking, he vowed to pursue “relentlessly the bandits, throughout the framework of the Structure and the legal guidelines of the Republic”, and to manipulate for “all Colombians”.
A rum model and a clothes line
Criticized for his misogynistic and homophobic statements, the long run president additionally helps carrying weapons and is a robust supporter of fracking, an environmentally dangerous gasoline and oil extraction course of that constitutes a purple line for a lot of left-wing voters.
Earlier than working for president, the candidate boasted on social media about touring on personal jets and promoted his numerous companies, together with his rum model and a clothes line referred to as “De la Espriella Model.”
His casualness generally performed tips on him. He subsequently needed to apologize after believing that it was essential to “eviscerate” the left. In an interview, he recounted how, as a younger man, he used to connect gunpowder to cats to make them fly via the air, earlier than claiming it was a joke.
With its victory, Colombia, leading producer of cocaine on the planet, turns into the most recent Latin American nation to show to the correct, after Argentina, Chile and even Ecuador whose leaders, aligned with Washington, shortly congratulated it. In keeping with specialists, his guarantees of a navy offensive might plunge the nation into a brand new spiral of violence.
