Colombia's De la Espriella takes office in Cali, vowing hard line on armed groups

Inauguration in Cali

Abelardo de la Espriella, a 48-year-old lawyer and businessman who has never held public office, was sworn in as Colombia's president on Friday at 15:00 local time (20:00 GMT) in Cali, breaking with the bicentennial tradition of holding the ceremony in Bogotá. The inauguration took place at the Arena USC, an auditorium at the Universidad Santiago de Cali, in the heart of a region grappling with armed-group violence. Valle del Cauca, the department where Cali sits, had the highest homicide rate in 2025.

De la Espriella, who calls himself "El Tigre" (The Tiger), won a close runoff on June 21 against Senator Iván Cepeda, an ally of outgoing President Gustavo Petro. He succeeds Petro, Colombia's first leftist president, and will serve a four-year term. Petro did not attend the ceremony, having contested the decision to move it from Bogotá to Cali before Congress. Petro has also alleged electoral fraud, though no authority has reported any such finding. Petro's allies called protests in major cities after losing what was the narrowest election in Colombia's history.

Security and foreign guests

Cali was under heavy security for the event, with 11,000 military personnel deployed and an anti-drone system activated. The outgoing government warned of possible "acts of terrorism" on inauguration day.

About a dozen heads of state attended, including Argentina's Javier Milei, Ecuador's Daniel Noboa, Chile's José Antonio Kast, Paraguay's Santiago Peña, Costa Rica's Laura Fernández, Panama's José Raúl Mulino, the Dominican Republic's Luis Abinader, and Honduras's Nasry Asfura. King Felipe VI of Spain, accompanied by Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares, arrived in Cali shortly after 7:00 local time and met privately with De la Espriella at the Centro Cultural de Cali before the ceremony. A US delegation led by the Attorney General and Israel's foreign minister were also present.

Hard line on armed groups

De la Espriella, a Colombian-American citizen backed by US President Donald Trump, has pledged to abandon Petro's policy of negotiating with armed groups, calling the peace process a failure. After the ceremony, he planned to travel to a military battalion in Cali to address troops and warn illegal armed groups to surrender or face being declared "military targets." The groups operating in the area include FARC dissidents who rejected the peace agreement signed a decade ago, the Clan del Golfo cartel, and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group.

He has also pledged to join Colombia to the "Shield of the Americas," a regional anti-drug-trafficking coalition that emerged from a summit held by Trump in March.

His rise to power will reinforce this rightward shift across much of Latin America and consolidate a regional bloc of conservative governments against a dwindling number of left-wing administrations.

Governing from the regions

De la Espriella announced that his presidency will have "alternative seats" in Medellín, Cali, and Barranquilla, and that he will seek a law to make Barranquilla Colombia's "alternate capital." He lives in Barranquilla, where his law firm De La Espriella Lawyers is based.

I have said that I will not govern from the Casa de Nariño. I will go to Bogotá, of course, but I will be in all the regions of the country.

His designated interior minister, Rodrigo Lara, said the initiative aims to "reclaim the regions, reclaim the coasts of a country that was built from a navel, from a center, far from the coasts, that is to say from communication with the world."