Clara López abandona candidatura para respaldar a Iván Cepeda en carrera presidencial colombiana

Colombia's presidential race is tightening as the May 31 election approaches, with the left consolidating its support while the right fractures into competing camps. Senator Clara López announced this week that she is withdrawing her presidential candidacy to throw her backing behind Iván Cepeda, the frontrunner from the Historic Pact coalition. The decision, made public by multiple news outlets on Wednesday, aims to prevent the left from splitting its vote in the first round. López, who registered her candidacy on January 31, will make the formal announcement next week at an event alongside the Historic Pact. Sources close to the congresswoman told Caracol Radio that the move is designed to keep progressive voters unified.

Cepeda has been steadily accumulating endorsements from former rivals. Last week, he secured the backing of Juan Fernando Cristo, a former interior minister and liberal reformist who leads the small En Marcha party—marking Cepeda's first formal alliance outside the Historic Pact itself. Cristo, who had declined his own presidential bid, emphasized that Colombia must deepen and accelerate social reforms while correcting course on policies that have underperformed, particularly the government's "total peace" strategy with armed groups. The green senator Ariel Ávila is also expected to formally endorse Cepeda soon. In the most recent polling from the Centro Nacional de Consultoría, released Sunday, Cepeda holds 34.5 percent support, a slight dip from 35.4 percent in the previous survey but still commanding the race. In a hypothetical runoff against right-wing senator Paloma Valencia, the two would be in a technical tie: Cepeda at 43.3 percent and Valencia at 42.9 percent, within the poll's 3 percent margin of error.

The right wing, by contrast, is showing visible strain. Valencia, the uribista candidate, has surged dramatically in recent weeks. A Gad3 poll published Thursday showed her at 16 percent support, up from just 4 percent in February—a fourfold increase. She has attracted endorsements from former ministers under Álvaro Uribe, Juan Manuel Santos, and Iván Duque. Yet her gains have come at the expense of Abelardo de la Espriella, the ultra-right lawyer who held the conservative lane's lead until recently. De la Espriella, who had positioned himself as fiercely independent, has begun attacking Valencia for accepting support from traditional political parties and the santista establishment. "All those people came knocking on my door and I didn't let them in, because this is extreme coherence," he said Wednesday. "You can't be independent when you're taking money from everyone." Valencia fired back, insisting she has not promised ministerial posts in exchange for endorsements and that her hands are clean. The tension marks the first real fracture on the right as the campaign enters its final stretch.

Meanwhile, the electoral machinery has moved forward with procedural matters. The National Registry conducted a lottery Wednesday morning to determine candidate positions on the ballot. Cepeda drew the top spot—position one—on the ballot that Colombian voters will receive May 31. Abelardo de la Espriella landed in position five, Claudia López in position three, Paloma Valencia in position twelve, and Sergio Fajardo in position thirteen. Only two presidential candidates attended the drawing: Sondra Macollins and Carlos Caicedo, along with Pedro de la Torre, the vice-presidential running mate of Mauricio Lizcano. The ballot will contain fifteen positions, with the final slot reserved for blank votes.

Cepeda has also won a legal victory that his campaign is highlighting. The Eighteenth Civil Court of the Oral Circuit in Medellín ruled Wednesday that his statements about paramilitarism's history in Antioquia were grounded in historical fact and did not violate anyone's rights to honor, reputation, or personal development. Three citizens had filed injunctions challenging his discourse, but the court rejected them, concluding that Cepeda's intention was to highlight the resilience and transformative capacity of Antioquia's people, not to stigmatize them or create a false image of violence and criminality.

The campaign has also been roiled by accusations and denials. Former president Álvaro Uribe, without presenting evidence, accused Cepeda of plotting to have him killed and of having orchestrated the assassination of senator and presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay. Uribe claimed Cepeda's role as a mediator in the FARC peace accord, which later fractured when Jesús Santrich and Iván Márquez broke away to form the Second Marquetalia, somehow connected him to the crime. Cepeda responded in a public statement demanding that Uribe present his evidence to the courts rather than make accusations in the press. "Responsibility to the country demands that we turn to institutions and allow justice to clarify the facts based on verifiable evidence," he wrote on X. Uribe also resurrected an old claim that Cepeda's name appeared in computers belonging to deceased FARC commander Raúl Reyes, suggesting improper ties. Cepeda has long maintained that he organized a march on March 6, 2008, to honor victims of state crimes, not to support the FARC. The Interpol certified the email mention while the Supreme Court of Justice dismissed the files as evidence.

President Gustavo Petro himself has come under scrutiny. The New York Times reported that two federal prosecutors in the United States are investigating Petro for possible links to drug traffickers. The president swiftly denied the allegations on X: "Never in my life have I spoken with a drug trafficker." He noted that no investigation exists against him in Colombia and pointed out that he spent a decade of his life, at great personal risk and at the cost of his family's exile, denouncing the ties between powerful narcos and politicians in Congress and local and national governments. María José Pizarro, Cepeda's debate chief and a senator from the Historic Pact, questioned whether the U.S. investigation represented foreign interference in Colombian affairs, and criticized right-wing figures like Valencia for welcoming American scrutiny of Petro.

Questions about electoral integrity have also surfaced. Interior Minister Armando Benedetti and Technology Minister Carina Murcia have asked the National Registry to allow them to audit the source code and software used for the preliminary count and official tally in the presidential election. The Registry has resisted, arguing that exposing the code to anyone, including the government, would make it vulnerable to hacking or manipulation. The Petro administration has repeatedly alleged the possibility of electoral fraud, and Benedetti's latest request keeps that concern in the public eye. The Electoral Observation Mission, however, reported a 99.8 percent correspondence between preliminary counts and official tallies from the March 8 legislative elections, offering some reassurance about the integrity of the process—though the mission also criticized high-level government officials for making statements about candidates and results that fell short of institutional standards for prudence and responsibility.