MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Colombia's president-elect suspends transition, accuses Petro of attempting a coup

De la Espriella, a right-wing lawyer who won the June 21 runoff, ordered his vice president-elect, José Manuel Restrepo, to suspend transition meetings “immediately” on Tuesday

Colombia's president-elect, Abelardo de la Espriella, froze the transition process with the outgoing government of Gustavo Petro on Tuesday and accused the president of attempting a coup, in a sharp escalation exactly one month before the handover of power, set for August 7.

De la Espriella, a right-wing lawyer who won the June 21 runoff, ordered his vice president-elect, José Manuel Restrepo, to suspend transition meetings “immediately” on Tuesday morning. Hours later, in an address broadcast on social media from Barranquilla, he expanded on his reasons. “We cannot sit at the table with a gang of coup-plotters and corrupt officials who do not recognize the sovereign will expressed at the ballot box,” he said, arguing that the outgoing government seeks to cling to power.

In the most sensitive part of his remarks, the president-elect asked the Armed Forces to “fulfill their oath to protect the Constitution and not obey any order from Petro to the contrary.” He also called on citizens to “resist” until the inauguration, and said he would respect peaceful protest but not “acts of force.”

The decision follows a hardening of Petro's stance. The previous day, the president had reiterated that he does not recognize the incoming government's legitimacy and claimed the true winner was his candidate, left-wing senator Iván Cepeda, insisting on alleged fraud through algorithm manipulation. He has presented no public evidence for those claims, which contradict international observers and the official count. De la Espriella won with about 12.9 million votes against Cepeda's 12.7 million, a margin of roughly 250,000 votes certified by the National Electoral Council and the National Registry, as MercoPress reported.

On Tuesday, however, Petro softened his position. “I recognize the real people who voted for Abelardo, and I respect them,” he wrote, and confirmed that he will hand over power at the end of his term, on August 6. He denied that his team was undermining the transition: “Those pulling out of the handover are the ones who can't stand being seen as unprepared,” he said, adding that the transfer would continue “before the people.”

Cepeda, who will take a Senate seat as runner-up, announced that he will lead “peaceful civil disobedience” against the incoming government. He conditioned recognition of the inauguration on De la Espriella renouncing his US citizenship and clarifying any ties to US security agencies, which the president-elect has not accepted.

Restrepo said the suspension does not halt the gathering of information on the state in which the executive will be received. For the outgoing government, Finance Minister Germán Ávila called for the sector-level transition tables to be suspended but left the door open to resuming talks if “conditions of respect” are restored. During the campaign, De la Espriella signaled willingness to extradite Petro, a threat one of his advisers has repeated during the transition.