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 Cali’s Pichincha Battalion to assume the supreme command of the armed forces and hold his first speech as president.
Both ceremonies were boycotted by the leftist political party of former President Gustavo Petro, which organized political rallies elsewhere in Cali, and in the cities of Bogota and Barranquilla.
In Barranquilla, Pacto Historico 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.
