Ghost of far-right paramilitaries hovers over Colombia’s presidential runoff vote

Supporters of the presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella at a campaign rally in Cartagena in June. Photograph: Manuel Pedraza/AFP/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Supporters of the presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella at a campaign rally in Cartagena in June. Photograph: Manuel Pedraza/AFP/Getty Images Ghost of far-right paramilitaries hovers over Colombia’s presidential runoff vote Colombians will choose on Sunday between two men whose lives have been very differently shaped by the militias, and whose visions for the country are poles apart W hoever wins Sunday’s presidential runoff vote in Colombia , the country’s next leader will have a personal history intertwined with one of the criminal forces at the heart of a decades-long armed conflict that claimed nearly half a million lives. The lives of Iván Cepeda and Abelardo de la Espriella have, in very different ways, been shaped by their relationship with Colombia’s paramilitaries – private armies originally established by rightwing landowners, drug traffickers, businessmen, mining magnates and politicians to fight leftwing guerrilla groups. De la Espriella, 47, a far-right admirer of Donald Trump and self-styled outsider, launched his legal career defending paramilitary leaders. View image in fullscreen Iván Cepeda (left) and Abelardo de la Espriella. Composite: Getty Images Cepeda’s father was assassinated by army officers linked to a paramilitary group, and the 63-year-old leftwing senator forged his public career as a human rights activist exposing those groups’ crimes. The winner will take office on 7 August and inherit the country’s worst violence since the landmark 2016 peace agreement between the government and most of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The two candidates advocate opposing strategies for dealing with the surge in crime. De la Espriella, who has led the polls since defeating Cepeda in the first round , supports a return to the kind of full-scale military confrontation that has done little to curb violence in the past. View image in fullscreen Supporters of Abelardo de la Espriella at his closing campaign rally in Buga, Valle del Cauca. Photograph: Joaquín Sarmiento/AFP/Getty Images Cepeda, who is backed by the current president, argues for a modified continuation of Gustavo Petro’s strategy of “total peace”. Petro, who is barred by the constitution from running for re-election, has proposed negotiations to dismantle all armed groups, including leftwing rebels, paramilitaries and organised crime factions. Violence has surged, however, and security experts say the strategy has broadly failed . Sunday’s vote “reflects the reality of a country shaped by drug trafficking,” said Gustavo Duncan, one of Colombia’s leading scholars of paramilitarism. Paramilitary groups were first formed in the 1960s in response to the emergence of leftwing rebel groups and often operated with the collusion of the Colombian military. By the 1980s, as the cocaine t