De la Espriella sworn in as Colombia’s new president – Colombia News

President Abelardo de la Espriella was sworn in in Colombia’s third largest city, Cali, under extreme security precautions.

De la Espriella was sworn in by the president of Congress, Senator Honorio Henriquez of the far-right Democratic Center party in the theater of the private University of Santiago de Cali.

The first part of the ceremony was attended by the Spanish King Felipe VI, multiple heads of state from Latin America and more than 60 ambassadors.

After being sworn in, De la Espriella went to the nearby Pichincha Battalion to assume the supreme command of the armed forces and hold his first speech as president.

The president vowed the security forces that he would be “an essential part of the miracle country” and vowed that at the end of his four-year mandate “authority will be felt in every corner of the country.”

De la Espriella also promised that “nobody will be persecuted for his opinions” and warned members of the “regime” of former President Gustavo Petro he would cooperate with “other States,” suggesting they could be extradited.

Both ceremonies were boycotted by Petro’s leftist political party, the Historic Pact, which organized political rallies elsewhere in Cali, and in the cities of Bogota and Barranquilla.

In Barranquilla, Senator Ivan Cepeda stressed the left does not recognize the incoming government because of De la Espriella’s US citizenship and his alleged debts with the US Department of Justice.

“De la Espriella, who once acted as an intermediary for drug traffickers and paramilitaries—from whose ill-gotten gains he has profited—has now become a figure who will be pressured by the United States, by his own government, and by its federal agencies to allow all kinds of foreign intervention in Colombia,” said Cepeda.

The leftist senator lost the elections to De la Espriella with a razor-thin margin of less than one percent. His supporters continue to seek a court order to nullify the election.