Abelardo de la Espriella, the winner of Colombia’s June 21 presidential runoff election, delivers a speech in Cali, Colombia, on Friday during his swearing-in ceremony. Photo by Ernesto Guzman Jr./EPA
Aug. 7 (UPI) — The far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella was sworn in as president of Colombia Friday amid tight security at a ceremony held in the auditorium of a private university in Cali, the South American nation’s third-largest city.
De la Espriella took an oath to “faithfully uphold the Constitution and laws of Colombia” as he received the presidential sash from Sen. Honorio Henríquez, president of Colombian congress and a member of the far-right Democratic Center party.
Once installed, the new leader then swore in his vice president, José Manuel Restrepo, while his guest of honor, 74-year-old farmer Luis Felipe Yagüé, looked on as a symbol of De la Espriella’s support for small business owners and entrepreneurs, the Spanish news agency EFE reported.
The event triggered tight security measures, with 11,000 members of the security forces mobilized to ensure safety in Cali and the surrounding areas, local media reported. The strict measures included a ban on alcohol sales, transportation restrictions and reinforcements of the National Police.
No incidents of violence or narcoterrorism were reported in Cali on Friday, officials said.
Former Colombian presidents such as César Gaviria, Álvaro Uribe and Iván Duque were in attendance for the ceremony, but 2016 Nobel Peace Prize winner Juan Manuel Santos, president from 2010 to 2018, was not invited, EFE reported.
Also in attendance at Santiago de Cali University were King Felipe VI of Spain, Argentine president Javier Milei and FIFA president Gianni Infantino, as well as host of other Latin American leaders.
Meanwhile, members of outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s leftist Historical Pact party, boycotted De la Espriella’s swearing in ceremony. Many of them claim the ally of U.S. President Donald Trump won through fraud in the June 21 runoff election and that his victory was illegitimate.
Petro last month barred De la Espriella from holding his inauguration at a military base, triggering an unprecedented institutional dispute highlighting the country’s deepening political polarization.
The then-president repeated his claim that the incoming government “was not elected by a majority of the people.”
During the ceremony, De la Espriella reiterated his “tough-on-crime” credentials by announcing he will publish a list of local narco-terrorist organizations and instruct police to battle them more forcefully in a further repudiation of Petro’s “Total Peace” strategy of negotiating with armed groups.
“The option of dialogue is completely exhausted,” he asserted, according to CNN.
