Colombian Right Fractures as Valencia Gains Ground; Cepeda Maintains Lead

Colombia's presidential race is fracturing along predictable and unpredictable lines at once, just over six weeks before voters head to the polls on May 31. The Conservative Party and the Party of the U have both formally thrown their weight behind Paloma Valencia, the uribista senator who won the right's internal primary in March. But Cambio Radical, a party that houses several powerful regional clans with competing loyalties, has chosen a different path: it released its members to support whomever they wish among the right-wing candidates—Valencia or the ultra-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella—while explicitly forbidding them from backing the official candidate, leftist senator Iván Cepeda. The move reflects the party's internal divisions, but it also signals something larger: the right is splintering even as it tries to consolidate.

The Green Party, which has long been a center-left formation, is coming apart at the seams. Its National Board voted 32 to 1 to accept the formal separation request of senator Jonathan Ferney Pulido Hernández, who cited irreconcilable political differences. For years, the party had housed both fierce critics of President Gustavo Petro's government—like senators Katherine Miranda and Catherine Juvinao—and loyal supporters of his agenda. The tension finally broke. But here is the twist: the party's majority, including representatives Jaime Raúl Salamanca Torres, has decided to form a commission to negotiate a programmatic agreement with Cepeda's campaign. Miranda, who has long been skeptical of the government, called the decision "antidemocratic" and said it was more coherent to support Valencia and her running mate Juan Daniel Oviedo. Angélica Lozano, another Green senator, lamented that the party had forbidden its members from backing Claudia López and Sergio Fajardo—both center-left candidates who emerged from the party's own ranks. "It is a sad and final closing of the party," she said.

Vicky Dávila, the former editor of Semana magazine who jumped into the presidential race as an outsider last June, has now jumped back out—or at least sideways. She lost the right's primary to Valencia and initially threw her support behind the winner, as the agreement stipulated. But instead of campaigning for Valencia, Dávila has reactivated her YouTube channel to conduct interviews. Last week she sat down with former president Álvaro Uribe. "You know that what stirs my heart is the journalist in me," she told him. More striking still: on Sunday, she interviewed Abelardo de la Espriella, the very candidate she had publicly attacked during the primary for his murky past, particularly his work defending Alex Saab, the alleged front man for Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. In that interview, Dávila insisted she was not representing any political project. De la Espriella denied ever having spoken with Saab in seven years. The two circled each other warily, their old antagonisms still visible beneath the surface.

Cepeda, who leads every poll, has maintained a careful silence on several explosive matters. When asked about a reported party held by criminal gang leaders in an Antioquia prison—men who have been in dialogue with the government for three years—Cepeda said only that prison authorities should handle it. "But do not expect declarations against the peace from me," he said. His rivals seized on the remark. Valencia accused him of staying silent while criminals benefit and violence rises. Sergio Fajardo, the center-left candidate, called Cepeda's silence "complicit and incoherent." Meanwhile, former president Uribe, without presenting evidence, has accused Cepeda of orchestrating plans to kill him and of having links to the FARC through his role as a mediator in the peace accord. Cepeda has demanded that Uribe take his accusations to court. The Justice Minister has also had to clarify that the prison workers' union cannot campaign for Cepeda, after the union president publicly endorsed him on behalf of the penitentiary system's employees.

In the latest polling, Cepeda holds 34.5 percent support, a slight dip from 35.4 percent in the previous survey. But Valencia has surged dramatically. The Center for National Consultation found her at 22.2 percent, up from just 4.1 percent before the March primary. In a hypothetical runoff between the two, the poll shows a technical tie: Cepeda at 43.3 percent, Valencia at 42.9 percent, within the margin of error. De la Espriella, the ultra-right candidate, sits at around 21 percent in most surveys, though he has lost ground. The two right-wing frontrunners are now openly clashing. De la Espriella has criticized Valencia for accepting support from traditional parties and former government officials—people he says came knocking on his door and whom he turned away. "This is extreme coherence," he said. "You cannot be independent when you take money from everyone." Valencia fired back that she welcomes anyone to her campaign but has not promised ministerial posts in exchange for endorsements. "I have not committed a single ministry, a single position, and people know me for my transparency and clean hands."

The ballot itself was drawn by lottery on Wednesday morning. Cepeda, the frontrunner, will appear first on the ballot. De la Espriella will be in position five. Valencia in position twelve. The fifteen-candidate ballot includes center-left options like Claudia López and Sergio Fajardo, who are polling in the single digits. With less than two months until the vote, the shape of the race is becoming clearer: a three-way contest on the right between Valencia, De la Espriella, and the fractured center, with Cepeda holding a commanding but not insurmountable lead on the left. The question now is whether the right can consolidate behind a single candidate, or whether its divisions will hand the presidency to the left by default.