Colombia’s next president will either be leftist senator Iván Cepeda or far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella, whose former clients include drug traffickers. The two will go head to head in the presidential runoff on 21 June, after no candidate won the 50% voteshare needed to automatically win the presidency at the first-round vote on Sunday. De la Espriella came first with 43.7% of the vote, closely followed by Cepeda with 40.9%.
De la Espriella’s rapid rise has been the major surprise of this year’s race to the presidency. The 47-year-old is a new figure in Latin America’s far right, who combines Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele’s brand of popular authoritarianism with Javier Milei’s radical economic liberalism in Argentina.
Less discussed, but equally significant, has been the political recovery of incumbent president Gustavo Petro, who leads Colombia’s first left-wing government in recent history.
Just over a year ago, he was widely seen as politically weakened and, according to some observers, incapable of backing a competitive successor. (Petro himself could not run again due to Colombia’s strict one-term limit for presidents.) The strength of Cepeda’s candidacy reflects a political shift driven by the radicalisation of the economic agenda in Colombia, the third most unequal country in the world.
At the start of 2025, Petro had approval ratings of only 32% and 63% disapproval, according to Invamer, Colombia’s oldest and most influential polling firm. His government was suffering from public dissatisfaction over security, economic difficulties, and repeated conflicts with Congress.
The turning point came in March 2025, when Petro took on Congress over a Senate committee’s rejection of a labour reform bill that his government had tabled in 2023. The bill, which included measures such as higher overtime and night-shift pay, restrictions on precarious contracts, stronger labour rights and worker protections, was rejected after harsh criticism from business groups and conservative sectors, which argued that it would increase costs and informality.
Rather than backing down, Petro announced that he would attempt to convene a national popular consultation to submit the reform directly to voters – transforming a parliamentary defeat into a permanent political campaign. The president mobilised unions, social movements, and workers around the idea that political elites were blocking the labour reforms that they had voted for at the ballot box in 2022.
The government formally proposed a popular consultation on 1 May 2025, International Workers’ Day, during a massive rally in Bogotá, but the Senate narrowly rejected the proposal weeks later. Even so, Petro’s campaign proved politically successful. By increasing the political cost of blocking the reforms, the government pressured centrist forces and part of the business community into negotiations and a moderated version of the labour reform was ultimately approved in Congress in the second half of 2025.
The left portrayed the outcome as proof that popular mobilisation works, while the opposition accused Petro of governing through conflict. The public, though, appeared to side with the president; by February 2026, Petro’s approval rating had risen to 49%, while disapproval had fallen to 46%, according to Invamer. In less than a year, he had recovered more than 15 points in popularity.
Minimum wage was another central axis of Petro’s political recovery, after he promoted consecutive real increases throughout his presidency. The peak of the confrontation came at the end of 2025, when Petro decreed a 23% increase in the minimum wage, resulting in a significant real increase in purchasing power, with inflation running at around 5% last year.
Once again, conflict defined the process. Colombia’s Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court, temporarily suspended the measure, but Petro responded with a transitional decree that maintained the increase while opening a broader legal and political dispute. The president called for street mobilisations in defence of the increase, which unions, labour federations, and social organisations supported. The dispute became one of the central themes of the 2026 campaign. For much of Colombia’s working population, it was seen not as institutional instability, but as a president fighting for their wages.
It is no coincidence that labour issues are also returning to the centre of Brazil’s political agenda. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has used the debate over the “6x1” work schedule – in which a person works 44 hours over six consecutive days, followed by only one day off – to reconnect with working-class voters. A constitutional amendment he proposed to limit work weeks to 40 hours over five days, with two rest days, was approved last month by the Chamber of Deputies, but still needs to be passed by the Senate. It comes after a policy to raise Mexico’s minimum wage, which doubled between 2018 and 2024, coincided with a rise in electoral support for the ruling Morena party.
Petro and Lula share roots on the left and a belief in labour as a central political axis, but they arrive at different destinations through different paths. Lula is a conciliator; Petro is a politician of permanent confrontation. The Colombian president took a gamble in challenging Congress, economic elites, and the political system – and it worked, while his Brazilian counterpart prefers political stability and negotiation to secure victories. These are styles shaped by different histories and institutions, but perhaps Lula could be a little more like Petro, and Petro a little more like Lula.
Regardless of the outcome, Colombia’s election offers an important lesson about the powerful mobilising potential of economic issues. While moral, identity-based, and security concerns continue to fuel far-right candidates across the region, debates over wages, work, social protection and income distribution still appear capable of energising the progressive camp.
Pedro Rossi is Vice President and Chief Economist of the Global Fund for a New Economy (GFNE) and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil
