Colombia Heads to Presidential Polls as Armed Violence Shapes the Nation’s Future
Sunday's presidential election in Colombia arrives against a backdrop of surging armed conflict, mass displacement, and a population desperate for answers. The vote pits two candidates with sharply opposing visions against each other — one betting on negotiation, the other on military force — as ordinary Colombians bear the weight of escalating violence.
Edilma Martinez Flores knows that weight personally. At a support centre for displaced people in Bogotá, she described how armed criminal groups distributed leaflets near her home on the outskirts of Cali, in Colombia's south-west, ordering residents to leave or face violence. "My brother was murdered for not paying an extortion payment — in front of his children," she said. Bombs were planted along roads. She and her family abandoned everything and fled.
Her story is not exceptional. Colombia has endured six decades of conflict involving armed groups, the state, and cartels — a cycle of violence that has killed hundreds of thousands. What has changed in recent years is the scale: illegal armed groups have roughly doubled their membership over the last five years. FARC dissident factions, the National Liberation Army (ELN), and the Clan del Golfo have tightened their grip on rural territories tied to drug trafficking and illegal mining. A brutal offensive between the ELN and FARC dissidents near the Venezuela-Colombia border last year alone displaced tens of thousands.
Isabelita Mercado Pineda, a government advisor for peace, victims, and reconciliation in Bogotá, puts a number to the crisis: forced displacement rose 300 percent between 2024 and 2025. "We have not seen displacements like this for the last two decades," she said. She attributes the surge to rising cocaine production, territorial voids left after FARC demobilised in 2016, and what she called a government strategy offering criminal groups "carrot but not enough stick."
Left-wing senator Iván Cepeda, regarded as the chief architect of President Gustavo Petro's "total peace" strategy, built his campaign on prioritising dialogue with armed groups. He played a central role in the 2016 peace deal that disarmed thousands of FARC fighters and has promised "social transformations that the country urgently cries out for," while pledging to review and adjust the current peace approach.
His opponent is Abelardo de la Espriella — a right-wing businessman and lawyer who goes by El Tigre, "The Tiger." A US citizen endorsed by Donald Trump, de la Espriella has called for 10 mega-prisons, a hardline military crackdown, and a complete end to negotiations. "Any criminal who does not surrender will be taken down," he declared. Voters narrowly chose him over Cepeda in the first round.
The campaign itself has been shadowed by an assassination of a presidential candidate, homicides, kidnappings, and bombings. For millions of Colombians, Sunday's result will mean far more than politics — it will determine whether people like Edilma Martinez Flores ever get to go home.
📰 Source: BBC World