Abelardo de la Espriella will take office as Colombia’s new president Friday. Photo by Mauricio Dueñas Castañeda/EPA
Aug. 7 (UPI) — Abelardo de la Espriella officially takes office as Colombia’s president Friday, beginning a term marked by a sharp shift to the far right following the administration of leftist Gustavo Petro and a pledge to fight organized crime with an “iron fist.”
Breaking with the tradition of holding the inauguration at Congress in Bogotá and amid an unprecedented deployment of 11,000 security personnel, De la Espriella will be sworn in at the arena of Santiago de Cali University.
The decision is intended to send a political message about governing from the regions and closer to areas heavily affected by the country’s armed conflict.
The leader of the Defenders of the Homeland movement comes to power amid deep political polarization after defeating leftist Sen. Iván Cepeda in a runoff election by just 250,000 votes out of more than 26 million cast.
De la Espriella’s most pressing challenge will be curbing the expansion of organized crime, which now has more than 28,000 armed members operating across 700 of Colombia’s 1,101 municipalities.
De la Espriella inherits a country where illegal armed groups grew by 23.5% over the past year.
According to a report by the Ideas for Peace Foundation, organized crime groups in Colombia expanded their ranks by nearly 90% during the outgoing administration, reaching a combined 28,802 members in July 2026.
The expansion, driven in part by the growth of the Gulf Clan, has created a critical landscape of fragmented armed groups and territorial disputes among illegal organizations seeking control of strategic areas used for drug trafficking, illegal mining and extortion.
The Ideas for Peace Foundation criticized cease-fires implemented under Petro’s “Total Peace” plan for failing to include verifiable disarmament commitments or geographic restrictions.
The foundation said this allowed groups such as the Gulf Clan, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, and dissident factions of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to expand into new territories without resistance from security forces, bringing the groups into direct conflict with one another.
To fulfill his campaign pledge that “any criminal who does not surrender will be taken down,” De la Espriella announced a series of immediate security measures.
He said he will give armed groups a strict 30-day deadline to surrender to authorities under the rule of law, warning that there will be no generous concessions. He also plans to create a “defense bloc” by decree, deploying specialized police units to aggressively combat urban crimes such as extortion and homicide.
Retired Maj. Gen. Jorge Eduardo Mora, De la Espriella’s designated defense minister, will be tasked with restoring the offensive capabilities of Colombia’s security forces.
De la Espriella said he also plans to resume airstrikes against camps operated by groups involved in drug trafficking and terrorism through military and intelligence cooperation agreements with the United States and Israel.
Upon arriving in Colombia on Thursday to lead the White House delegation, U.S. acting Attorney General Todd Blanche expressed Washington’s enthusiasm about what he described as a historic political shift, according to local media reports.
“We are honored and privileged to be here in Cali, Colombia, and we are excited for the Colombian people and for what will happen tomorrow. We are also excited about what we hope will be the beginning of a great period of renewed relations and a strong partnership between the United States and Colombia,” Blanche said.
De la Espriella already has confirmed plans to close 14 embblockies as part of an austerity program, sever diplomatic relations with Cuba and Nicaragua and withdraw Colombia from multilateral initiatives such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Domestically, the new president will face a high fiscal deficit and plans to pursue a 40% reduction in government bureaucracy, incentives for the private sector and a restructuring of the country’s troubled public healthcare system.
