Colombia’s Liberal Party and former President Alvaro Uribe agreed to join forces to prevent a leftist victory in the presidential election next year.
Following a meeting with Uribe on Friday, former President and long-time Liberal Party leader Cesar Gaviria said that “we are organizing ourselves to effectively bring together a coalition of parties that are in a position to contribute their electoral strength and their candidates” to oppose the winner of a leftist front candidate.
The meeting came days after the Historic Pact, the party of President Gustavo Petro, elected Senator Ivan Cepeda as their candidate in the March 2026 primary of the leftist Broad Front coalition.
The Broad Front primary will be held on the same day as the Congressional elections.
The Liberal Party and Uribe’s far-right Democratic Center party also agreed to hold a primary on the day of the congressional elections to come up with a united candidate for the first round of the presidential election in May.
Uribe and Gaviria called on other right-wing political parties and candidates to sign up for the primary.
In a newspaper column, the leader of the conservative Radical Change party, former vice-President German Vargas, said he agreed to the primary, but demanded that candidates who at one point served in the Petro administration be excluded.
Vargas also urged to hold the primary sooner in order to take on the left as a united front ahead of the congressional elections.
The Historic Pact primary also sought to elect congressional candidates with which they hope to be able to negotiate a majority coalition in Congress.
Many of the reforms promised by Petro and his political allies were sunk in Congress, where the mainly right-leaning parties have had a majority.
Cepeda, a long-time human rights defender, has made it clear that he wants to continue Petro’s reformist agenda.
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