Outgoing president of Colombia Gustavo Petro held a press conference on Monday in which he again claimed, against all public evidence, that the Colombian presidential election was “stolen” by President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella, warning that “civil war” could erupt if the normal inauguration process continues.
De la Espriella, an outsider lawyer who ran a campaign promising a return to conservative policies and alignment with the United States after four years of Petro’s radical leftist rule, won the June runoff election handily against Petro’s hand-picked candidate, Sen. Iván Cepeda. Cepeda rapidly conceded defeat and international observers celebrated the election as one of the world’s cleanest. American Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH), who was in the country to observe the elections, told reporters that America’s electoral system could learn from the smooth vote-counting and transparency of the Colombian model.
Despite Cepeda’s concession, radical Marxists in Colombia marked de la Espriella’s election with violent riots and Petro used his position in office to claim fraud. Petro has for months claimed, sharing dubious “proof” documents in long-winded Twitter statements, that the Israeli government “stole” the election for de la Espriella, citing the candidate’s promise to restore diplomatic relations with Jerusalem.
Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro makes a victory sign beside the ceremonial sword of Simon Bolivar, the 19th-century South American leader, at the Quinta de Bolívar museum in Bogotá on July 24, 2026, as the historic artifact is returned to its traditional home. (Jose VARGAS / AFP via Getty)
In reality, Colombia has for the vast majority of its history maintained friendly diplomatic relations and fruitful economic ties with Israel, ruptured only by the aberration of Petro’s presidency. Petro is the country’s first-ever leftist president.
Petro also conceded, briefly, de la Espriella’s victory and announced a transition process in June, but broke his promise to aid in the presidential transition shortly thereafter, returning to his conspiracy theories.
Fresh from a trip to Cuba to celebrate the repressive Castro dynasty there, Petro held a press conference on Monday to effectively demand that de la Espriella not take office on Friday, Colombia’s Inauguration Day. He reiterated that, according to him, Cepeda will be the legitimate president of Colombia on August 7, and not Petro, but he nonetheless did not explicitly state he would step aside when his own term ended on Friday.
“We are before a fraud and an institutional problem that is undoubtedly profound, and that is the possession of an illegitimate president because he who won is named Iván Cepeda,” Petro ranted. “Of course, this causes not just the judicial discussion that needs to happen, etc, but a major political problem.”
“Foreigners committed with foreign money the electoral fraud that imposes a president who did not win the election,” he continued. “Goodbye national sovereignty. And what is a nation good for without national sovereignty? It’s not a republic, it’s not sovereign, the entire constitution of Colombia falls apart, and we are a colony, then, beginning at 3 p.m. on Friday. Colony. We lost 250 years of independent history; we returned to the beginning.”
Elsewhere in his tirade, Petro again spuriously accused Israel of stealing the election of de la Espriella, using antisemitic tropes describing “moneyed Israeli” individuals changing the election results, complaining that “there is no foreign chosen people of God.”
“The first certainty the people should have is that Iván Cepeda won the presidency, that the elections were robbed by moneyed Israelis directed by a genocidist and they did it from abroad modifying the vote in 1,665 electoral posts already detected,” he alleged.
He then continued on to threats that the country will face violence if the presidential inauguration occurs normally.
“The electoral regime in Colombia must change substantially if we don’t want more violence,” Petro claimed.
“We are in a struggle against a truly murderous narcofascism,” he continued. “We know of the existence of dozens of tons of explosives in Cali. Drug trafficking groups want to act in a terrorist way to give the excuse of internal commotion and the opportunity for Abelardo to overturn by decree the social reform laws by surprise.”
“It is very clear that what can happen is a civil war in Colombia,” he continued.
Petro insisted that, while he remains president, he would order the police “not to attack the people,” presumably a signal that he would prevent police from responding to situations of mob violence for as long as he maintains power.
“The policies of sweeping away social reforms of the people will only augment the people’s resistance that can reach unimaginable levels,” he continued.
De la Espriella has vowed a heavy-handed approach against public disorder and crime, as he had campaigned on, and addressed the possibility of leftist riots in an online address on Sunday.
“For the first time, an outgoing president and his losing candidate, defeated, the wing of the outgoing president in Congress, which is pretty big … have opted, for no reason, not to recognize the triumph of democracy in the ballot booth and declare a so-called ‘civil disobedience,’” de la Espriella narrated, calling it an “affront to the sovereign decision of the Colombian people.”
Accusing Petro of “preparing the destabilization of the country,” he promised voters, “I am the president of all Colombians and I will make [them] respect, with the strength of the constitution and the law, what Colombians chose, which is to elect me.”
“Let’s stop normalizing the incorrect, the illegal, the twisted, let’s call things by their name and let’s face them for what they are: so called ‘civil disobedience’ is a euphemism to try to destabilize democracy,” he asserted, “and I will not allow it.”