Iceland’s Forthcoming Referendum on EU Membership

Alfred de Zayas

 July 29, 2026

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Photo by Evelyn Paris

In August 2026 Icelanders will vote in a referendum whether Iceland should open accession talks with a view to joining the European Union[1].

Icelanders would be well advised to keep away from the EU, which has morphed from a peace-loving European integration movement into a war-mongering globalist machine run by a bloated bureaucracy in Brussels that operates without transparency or accountability and endorses militarization and virulent Russophobia.

In the light of Iceland’s venerable democratic traditions going back to the Thingvellir Parliament of the tenth century[2], it would be madness for the Icelanders to abandon their hard-won sovereignty and independence.

In 1992 and 93 Iceland did negotiate the EEA (European Economic Area) agreement that gave it access to the EU market but without membership and many of the obligations. The EEA agreement came into effect in 1994, and was negotiated during the period after the adoption of the Treaty of Maastricht (see below). It is important to know that the EU in the time of Maastricht was fundamentally different to EU following the adoption of the Treaty of Lisbon of 2007.  The EU is now speeding into a more centralised, authoritarian and even totalitarian future.

There is another important consideration.  The Treaty of Lisbon is in many aspects incompatible with the UN Charter.  Icelanders must actually choose between their obligations under the UN Charter and the commitments and actions that flow from the Treaty of Lisbon and the arbitrary decisions of the European Commission, currently under Ursula von der Leyen.

UN membership

Let us review a bit of history.  Iceland joined the United Nations in 1946.

The purposes and principles of the UN are laid out in Articles 1-2 of the Chater, notably a joint commitment of all members to advance peace through cooperation, multilateralism, conflict-prevention, respect of the sovereign equality of states, the self-determination of peoples, the promotion of human rights and the right to development.

Article 103 of the Charter, the supremacy clause, stipulates: “In the event of a conflict between the obligations of the Members of the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail.”

Because of this overarching legal commitment, every UN member State must consider, before entering into any treaty or joining any other organization, whether such action would be compatible with UN membership.

Article 52 of the UN Charter stipulates that UN members can join other organizations “provided that such arrangements or agencies and their activities are consistent with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations.” (emphasis added)

This short paper argues that Iceland should not become a member of the European Union, which admittedly had very good beginnings, but which gradually moved away from its original peace-oriented vocation and emerged as a competing supra-national geopolitical entity with aims and activities frequently in conflict with the United Nations Charter, General Assembly and Human Rights Council resolutions.

On the basis of the Schuman Declaration (1950) the Treaties of Paris (1951) and Rome (1957) the European Common Market was established with the purpose of advancing European integration, democracy and human rights.  For decades the European States worked in tandem with the United Nations and contributed to stability and prosperity in the region.

The Treaty of Maastricht (1992) created the European Union and promoted peace and human rights while respecting diversity and state sovereignty.  Article 6 of the Maastricht Treaty stipulated
“The Union is founded on the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law, principles which are common to the Member States. 2. The Union shall respect fundamental rights, as guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms signed in Rome on 4 November 1950 and as they result from the constitutional traditions common to the Member States, as general principles of Community law. 3. The Union shall respect the national identities of its Member States…”

This arrangement was compatible with the UN Charter and guaranteed the respect of national identities and approaches in a manner consistent with the UNESCO Constitution, which also values the richness of diverse cultures and perspectives and discourages top-down homologation.

Unfortunately, the globalist movement in Europe largely homologized foreign policy, culture and even morals, in disregard of local approaches and traditions.  When in 2004 the idea of a European constitution was aired, it was quickly defeated in public opinion polls and in the referenda held in France and the Netherlands in 2006.  The European populations felt that the proposed constitution threatened their national identities guaranteed in the Treaty of Maastricht, that it opened the way to authoritarianism or even totalitarianism driven by a Brussels bureaucracy disconnected from the peoples of the member States of the European Union.

In the light of the impossibility to adopt the European Constitution by direct democratic vote, the bureaucrats decided in 2007 to drop the project of a European Constitution, and instead to take a short-cut relying on the parliaments of the member States, which were more easily manipulated than the populations they represented.

The Treaty of Lisbon or 13 December 2007 emerged as an Ersatz or surrogate European constitution, adopted in a questionable manner, and in any case unrepresentative of the wishes of the populations concerned.

Lip service was given to the principle of subsidiarity, according to which the EU acts (in theory) only where its member states agree unanimously. This reflects the legal norm that governmental decisions should be taken as close to the people as possible while still remaining effective. Smoke and mirrors.

In practice, however, the sovereignty of European States has been significantly reduced since 2007, and the Brussels bureaucracy has imposed rules and regulations – as well as unilateral coercive measures, wrongly referred to as “sanctions” – in an increasingly authoritarian manner, in disregard of the “margin of discretion” of supposedly sovereign European countries.

Particularly dangerous is the fact the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg sides with the European Council in most cases, notwithstanding well-based challenges from individual States.  In effect, EU law has primacy over the laws of member states, even in matters of access to information, freedom of opinion and expression, morals and national security.

In its Orwellian judgment of 2 July 2026, the EU Court in Luxembourg approved the legality of EU censorship of the internet and the criminalization of social media messages including electronic links to sanctioned senders[3].  In this genuinely totalitarian judgment, not only the rights of news services to broadcast information and perspectives are being violated by EU law, but also the right of every EU citizen to access and publicly discuss politically relevant information.

Access to information and freedom of opinion and expression are at the very core of every democracy.  These rights are stipulated in the European Convention on Human Rights, in the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the European Union, in article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and in General Comment 34 of the UN Human Rights Committee.[4]

This and other recent decisions by the European Court of Justice illustrate that there is no longer an effective recourse or remedy, because the European Court of Justice is clearly beholden to the EU Council.

Even the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has failed to protect European citizens from confiscation of private property e.g. pursuant to EU sanctions against Russia, and in clear violation of the European Convention of Human Rights. Here too, the right to private property has been done away with by the supra-national decision of EU bureaucrats to issues “sanctions” on targeted countries or persons.

Because of the severity of the consequences of these measures, numerous human rights organizations, including the Geneva International Peace Research Institute[5], have presented legal briefs to the Council of the European Union enumerating the violations of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights.  Thus far GIPRI and other organizations have received no appropriate response, other than a blanket reaffirmation from Brussels that the extra-judicial measures adopted pursuant to EU sanctions are legal.

A particularly egregious case of the new EU totalitarianism are the sanctions imposed on six European citizens for allegedly expressing views close to those of the Russian argumentation concerning the causes of the Ukrainian war since the Maidan coup d’état in February 2014.  Among those impacted are the retired Swiss Colonel and intelligence officer Jacques Baud,[6] and the German journalist Husseyn Dogru.

Moreover, as I explained before the UN Security Council on 25 March 2024[7], the EU “sanctions” are not compatible with the UN Charter.  For years now the European Union systematically violates resolutions of the General Assembly[8] and of the UN Human Rights Council[9], which condemn US and EU “sanctions” as incompatible with the UN Charter, international law, human rights norms and the right to development.  Moreover, EU “unilateral coercive measures” make the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals nearly impossible, and, together with the illegal US sanctions regime, cause deaths in the hundreds of thousands worldwide, as determined by the British medical journal The Lancet.  The imposition of such unilateral coercive measures undoubtedly constitutes the “use of force” in contravention of article 2(4) of the UN Charter and have no justification in international law in the absence of UN Security Council approval.  EU “sanctions” violate the right to life, the right to development, and the self-determination of peoples.

Another worrisome development in Europe is the systematic war-propaganda and fear-mongering, the refusal to settle disputes by peaceful means, in contravention of article 2(3) of the UN Charter and the virulent Russophobia displayed by the Brussels bureaucracy, in gross violation of article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which stipulates:

“1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.
2. Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.”[10]

In 2024 and again in 2025 the Geneva International Peace Research Institute submitted legal briefs to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court pursuant to article 15 of the Statute of Rome, alleging violations of articles 5, 6, 7 and 8 of the ICC Statute by the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas. EU policies are contrary to international criminal law in that they have provided and continue to provide military, political, economic, diplomatic and propagandistic support to a genocidal State, thus enabling Israel to continue the genocide against the Palestinians and to engage in acts of aggression against Lebanon, Syria, Iran etc.

Collectives of jurists in France, Italy and Germany have also submitted legal briefs challenging the actions by EU member states as contrary to the UN Charter, the Statute of Rome, the ICCPR (articles 6, 7, 14, 19, 21, 22, 25), the European Convention of Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the European Union.

All of the above activities by the European Union document the fact that the initially peace-loving institution has morphed into a totalitarian organization that no longer conforms with article 52 of the UN Charter, because it does not promote the purposes and principles of the UN but actually works against them.

Iceland must be very careful in considering any kind of association with the EU.  A coherent foreign policy by Iceland would reaffirm its commitment to the UN Charter and avoid any treaties or association that would restrict its sovereignty and margin of discretion and violate its obligations pursuant to the UN Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

The perception of the EU as a bastion of the “rule of law” and human rights can no longer be empirically sustained.  Vestiges of a positive perception of the EU are only a product of public relations, indoctrination and relentless propaganda.

Yet, in our world of Orwellian newspeak and cognitive dissonance, some – even in Iceland – pretend that it is perfectly normal to be committed to the UN Charter while working against its purposes and principles through aggressive policies adopted by the Brussels bureaucracy.

A well-advised Icelandic voter should reject any association with the European Union, because the EU is no longer the peace-loving Common Market but has morphed into a totalitarian organization that does not respect the democratic rights of European peoples but pretends to impose a one-size-fits all, one-narrative for all, on all European citizens.

All freedom-loving Icelanders are called upon to defend Iceland’s sovereignty and independence.

Notes.

[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/iceland-eu-membership-referendum-opposition-leader-rejects-foreign-influence/

[2] https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2016/05/thingvellir-northern-europes-first-parliament/

https://www.thingvellir.is/en/education/history/assembly-site/

[3] https://www.democrata.es/en/international/expansion-the-cjeu-extends-sanctions-to-rt-and-bans-its-content-from-being-disseminated-through-other-web-pages/https://eucrim.eu/news/cjeu-rulings-on-eus-restrictive-measures-against-russia-january-april-2025/$

https://www.rferl.org/a/ecj-eu-russia-sanctions-oligarchs/33434950.html

[4] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/netherlands-international-law-review/article/abs/freedom-of-opinion-and-freedom-of-expression-some-reflections-on-general-comment-no-34-of-the-un-human-rights-committee/ADCD74F635F688851788E9079E1ABB76

[5] Gipri.ch

[6] https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/04/30/the-antigone-movement-denouncing-the-inhumanity-of-eu-and-us-sanctions/

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2026/04/28/diplomatic-protection-an-underutilized-tool-to-counter-economic-sanctions-financial-blockades-and-other-unilateral-coercive-measures/

[7] https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/27/un-charter-un-credibility-and-unlawful-unilateral-coercive-measures/

[8] Resolution 80/209 of 17 December 2025

[9] Resolution 61/9 of 27 March 2026

[10] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights

Alfred de Zayas is a law professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and served as a UN Independent Expert on International Order 2012-18. He is the author of twelve books including “Building a Just World Order” (2021) “Countering Mainstream Narratives” 2022, and “The Human Rights Industry” (Clarity Press, 2021).

Colombia and Latin America: A new stage of the struggle

By Ted Zuur

Published 29 July, 2026

First published at Against The Current.

Sprawling over the southern hills of Bogotá, Ciudad Bolivar is a vast proletarian neighborhood of 700,000 people. On July 20, the first of Colombia’s two Independence days, it was the center of a national celebration of the country’s independence, replete with military ceremony — combined with the start of a mass campaign of resistance against the unprecedented attack against Colombian sovereignty represented by U.S. interference in the presidential election that appears to have placed an extreme rightwing candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella, in the office of the presidency of this country.

More than 100,000 people filled the parking lot of the Gran Plaza El Ensueño shopping mall and all the surrounding streets for blocks, to hear the farewell speech of outgoing President Gustavo Petro, the first ever leftwing president of this country and a central leader of the party known as the Pacto Historico (Historic Pact).

Simultaneously, demonstrations were held in every city of the country and in many small towns.

Colombia remains a key epicenter of the class struggle in Latin America and of the struggle between the United States and Latin America, but following this year’s elections, the conditions of that struggle have radically changed.

Legislative elections on March 8 made the Pacto Historico, the rising leftwing party here, the biggest party in Colombia in almost every respect. However, in the first round of the presidential election on May 31, the extreme rightwing dark horse, Abelardo de la Espriella, came in first with 10,361,499 votes to force a runoff with the Pacto Historico’s Senator Ivan Cepeda, who came in second with 9,688,361 votes.

The official candidate of the rightwing Centro Democratico, the party of former rightwing authoritarian President Alvaro Uribe, came in a distant third with only 1,639,685 votes.

Then in the June 21 runoff, the National Election Council’s official vote count gave Abelardo de la Espriella 12,959,542 votes, less than 1% more than the 12,708,712 votes of Senator Ivan Cepeda. (There were 13 candidates on the ballot.) The voter turnout of 63.6% was a record for this country.

De la Espriella is a lawyer who has specialized in defending corrupt politicians and businessmen, paramilitary leaders and drug dealers. For most of the last 20 years he has lived in Florida and Tuscany; he is a citizen of the United States and Italy as well as of Colombia.

His made-in-Miami candidacy was advised by MAGA senator from Ohio Bernardo Moreno (a dual U.S./Colombian citizen like De la Espriella) and endorsed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Donald J. Trump.

When the election results were announced, Trump tweeted, “He Won, BIG!”

Election fraud

The final official results were announced without addressing the more than 57,000 challenges to irregularities such as vote buying and electronic fraud that had already been filed.

President Gustavo Petro, elected as the candidate of the Pacto Historico in 2022 and the country’s first ever leftwing president, announced that he did not recognize the election as valid.

Petro asserted that it had been marked by fraud at the highest level, and subsequently he and others have sued the National Electoral Council, the Registrar of Voters, and the individuals whom they declared victorious. Altogether more than 30 lawsuits have been filed.

The central lawsuit targets the actions of the Registrar and the private contractor Thoms Greg and Company, which control the election process from the printing of forms to the software used to compile, count, and record votes. The Registrar, and the majority of the National Electoral Council, are members of political parties opposed to the Pacto Historico.

A seemingly mundane change made after the 2022 election of Petro, enlarging the E-14 form used at polling stations to record votes from one to two pages, is at the heart of the lawsuit. The change puts the signatures of witnesses and poll workers on a separate page from the record of votes, which creates the possible of falsifying the vote records scanned into the system’s computers.

That change, combined with the massive last-minute addition of hundreds of thousands of voters to the rolls, were the most important elements of a massive fraud according to the suit. The suit also alleges that the new form has also made it impossible for citizens and independent observers to verify any election results.

The lawsuit asks the Council of State, one of the country’s three Supreme Courts, to nullify the election results, conduct a recount or new election, and order changes to prevent future election fraud.

An attack on national sovereignty

At the same time, Ivan Cepeda announced that the Pacto Historico did not recognize the legitimacy of the election of De la Espriella, on the grounds that De la Espriella is a naturalized citizen of the United States who swore an oath to renounce all loyalties to countries other than the United States in order to become a U.S. citizen, thereby making him ineligible to serve as President of Colombia and Commander in Chief of its military forces.

Cepeda announced the beginning of a campaign of peaceful civil disobedience against the election fraud, against the attack on Colombia’s national sovereignty, in defense of the democratic and human rights of Colombians and the people of Latin America, and in defense of the significant gains made by the working class and oppressed of Colombia during Petro’s government.

Despite the official declaration that Abelardo de la Espriella won the presidential election, Colombia is far from being under the control of the United States and Trump’s Viceroy, Secretary of State Rubio.

No return to guerrilla warfare

The Pacto Historico has emphatically rejected the legitimacy of De la Espriella’s election and has begun a campaign of resistance based on mass protests, peaceful civil disobedience, and legal challenges in court. Part of this campaign is a battle to expand the Pacto’s organization through a membership drive and by preparing to run the largest possible number of candidates in next year’s local elections.

Despite the heightened political and social tension within the country, and between Colombia and the United States, what is not in the cards is a return of the left to guerrilla warfare or the preparation of an insurrection.

Colombia’s long history of armed conflict has left the country with a powerful desire for peace, which was the basis of Petro’s policy called Paz Total or Total Peace.

The history of the long series of armed conflicts here began with civil wars between factions of the ruling class organized into the traditional Liberal and Conservative Parties, devolving into local wars for land between poor peasants and large landowners. The peasant forces became part of the organized left, and the landlords’ private armies became rightwing death squads and paramilitaries.

Beginning in the 1970s, the rise of illegal drug production created an intersection between the old conflict and a new conflict for control of drug production and drug shipment routes. Profits from cocaine and other drugs were used to finance an arms race among armed groups which no side could win.

In 1990, M-19 — one of the principal guerrilla groups — made a peace agreement and came in from the cold to participate in that year’s elections. Shortly after the signing, Carlos Pizarro, the presidential candidate of M-19 and father of current Pacto Historico Senator Maria José Pizarro, was assassinated. Nevertheless, that peace agreement led to the constituent assembly which produced the current Colombian Constitution.

It did not lead to peace, however, as the government and the paramilitaries systematically assassinated over 6000 leftwing, social and union leaders, especially members and supporters of the Unión Patriótica, a political party that included supporters of the Communist Party as well as the FARC, the country’s largest guerrilla group.

One of those assassinated was a UP leader Manuel Cepeda, the father of the current Pacto Historico leader Ivan Cepeda. The terror campaign drove the FARC back into the armed struggle and into reliance on the profits of the illegal drug trade to arm itself.

Between 1999 and 2002, the government of President Andres Pastrana negotiated with the FARC while he worked with the United States to reorganize, retrain and rearm the Colombian military for an offensive against the FARC. The joint effort became famous as Bill Clinton’s Plan Colombia.

The military offensive was carried out under the leadership of the next President, Alvaro Uribe, and his Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos. Santos succeeded Uribe as president, and the offensive finally culminated, after the deaths of many FARC leaders and fighters, with a peace agreement in 2016.

Santos won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts and the FARC received various guarantees including seats in the Congress. As a result of the agreement, Colombia established its current system of transitional justice.

Since then, low-level armed conflict has continued with the ELN, with former FARC groups which did not support the peace agreement, and with armed drug gangs descended from the rightwing paramilitary groups, most notably the Clan del Golfo some of whose leaders have been clients of Aberlardo de la Espriella’s law firm.

President Petro’s Paz Total offered peace negotiations with all these groups regardless of whether they have any kind of political orientation or are simply criminal gangs. Despite some agreements which led to demobilizations, and some continuing negotiations, most of these groups continue in the illegal drug business — which is their reason to exist.

Nevertheless, for most Colombians, the armed struggle is just as far away as it is in the United States or western Europe, and that is a reality that they fervently want to continue.

One good measure of just how far Colombia is from its past of armed conflict is tourism, which has boomed during the Petro years. Domestic vacation trips have skyrocketed. In 2025, they grew 8% to reach a record of 50.8 million vacation trips by Colombians within the country.

Foreign tourist visits have grown from 0.6 million in 2007 to 6.49 million in 2025. This economic sector, which was almost completely moribund for decades, now accounts for almost 2.8% of Colombia’s GDP.

De la Espriella and Trump’s threats

All around the world, rightwing media and political parties continuously spotlight violent crime to gain support for more and more funds for police and military forces, which can then be used to defend private property and the political systems of capitalism.

In Colombia, stoking fears of violent crime in the cities and armed conflict in the countryside is the bread and butter of the mainstream media, despite statistics showing that both have declined in the last four years. What Colombian media outlets like RCN and Caracol produce is then recycled by the international media and press from CNN and The New York Times to Fox and Al Jazeera.

Petro’s Paz Total has successfully isolated the armed groups, dramatically reduced their remaining popular support, and diminished the scope of the armed conflict to a few areas of coca production and drug transportation routes well outside of almost all of the country’s population centers.

Despite these facts the right wing in Colombia, the United States and elsewhere have loudly and falsely portrayed Paz Total as a failure. De la Espriella has just as loudly announced that he plans a military offensive as soon as he is in office.

De la Espriella’s real target is not in the countryside, but rather the vibrant and growing political left in Colombia’s cities: the Pacto Historico and its ally the Alianza Verde (Green Alliance.) They represent the most important obstacle to the plans of U.S. and Colombian big business.

Petro’s government banned fracking and halted exploration and drilling for oil and natural gas, while many strip mining and forestry projects in sensitive environments have been successfully blocked by local activists and indigenous communities.

One of De la Espriella’s first priorities is to follow Donald Trump’s lead, immediately end the ban on fracking, and “drill baby, drill.” At the same time, De la Espriella has vowed to roll back and reverse the gains made by the mass movements during the Petro years.

These included historic increases in the minimum salary, expansion of the pension system to cover most of the population, major improvements in public education, and a labor reform that has reduced the work week and restored rights that had been taken away from workers during the Uribe administration.

The Pacto Historico and the Alianza Verde, the electoral expressions of the mass movements which won those gains, are the main targets of U.S. intervention into Colombia and of De la Espriella’s proposed militarization of Colombian society.

De la Espriella has promised to “gut” the left and has proposed to form urban militias reminiscent of the Convivir movement of the 1990s that served as the legal front of the paramilitary groups. He wants to take an Elon Musk-style ax and a Javier Millie-style chain saw to radically reduce the size of the Colombian state, while simultaneously increasing the size of the police and military.

He proposes to remove all restrictions that currently prevent the military from attacking civilian populations. He has promised a witch hunt against the left, the extradition of President Petro and others to the United States, and has proposed the construction of 10 mega-prisons modeled after Bukele’s infamous CECOT in El Salvador.

The witch hunt began in the United States rather than in Colombia when Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally ordered ICE to arrest a Colombian citizen named Beto Coral.

A former candidate of the Pacto Historico, Coral had been living legally in the United States and participating in the Colombian election as a poll watcher at Colombian consulates there. He has since been deported to Colombia. The arrest was reportedly made at the request of De la Espriella.

As soon as the election results were in, and while the persecution of Beto Coral was underway, the presumptive Vice President elect led a group of Abelardo de la Espriella’s closest collaborators to the United States. There they met with Rubio, Senator Bernardo Moreno, and a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Despite photographs, handshakes and praise from Rubio, Moreno and others, they flew home almost empty-handed. Rather than hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, all that Rubio and his coterie promised them was that the United States would help establish quasi-military police logistics centers in isolated rural areas to help with the war against drug dealers.

Although the Colombian right wingers’ dreams of a rebirth of Plan Colombia were dashed, their visit has provided the United States with a pretext for any future military intervention it may decide to undertake in the future.

A frightened new president

Abelardo de la Espriella’s campaign nickname was the tiger, but despite his nickname and war-like rhetoric, he has consistently exhibited extreme fearfulness of being in Colombia, and particularly of being in public in Colombia.

During the campaign, he also spoke behind a curtain of bullet-proof glass. As soon as the election campaign ended, he disappeared from public view, and his place in the public eye was taken over by his presumptive Vice-President elect, Jose Manuel Restrepo. Now, “the tiger” refuses to have his inauguration in the Colombian Congress where such events are traditionally held but instead wants to be inaugurated within the safety of a military base.

The transitional handoff of government between the outgoing administration and the incoming one is governed by law, but De la Espriella has not only boycotted the proceedings, he has ordered his minions to boycott them as well.

This led to the surreal spectacle of transition events in every ministry of the government, televised live on national TV, which feature presentations by the outgoing ministers and vice ministers, chairs reserved for other outgoing appointees full — and a row of empty seats at the table reserved for representative of the incoming De la Espriella government.

To mask the public impression of the effects, De la Espriella has organized a series of meetings with Governors of Departments and Mayors outside Bogotá under the name of a regional transition. Part of his attack on the central government involves plans to move government ministries and agencies out of Bogotá and to relocate them in cities such as Medellin and Barranquilla, where the local governments are run by his political allies.

Part of De la Espriella’s fear is undoubtedly related to his record of routinely betraying his friends and allies. As a lawyer representing Colombian drug dealers, he gained a reputation for betraying them to the DEA.

Leading up to the election campaign, he infuriated his ally former President Alvaro Uribe by opening the door to Ivan Cepeda gaining evidence that helped prosecute Uribe and resulted in the conviction of Uribe’s brother who is now facing a very long prison term.

His political position is precarious. His own political party has only four seats in the Senate, and none in the chamber of deputies. His supporters have put together a rag-tag coalition of rightwing parties divided by personal hatreds and jealousies, but united by fear of the rising tide of the Pacto Historico.

The largest of the rightwing parties, Uribe’s Centro-Democratico, has already defected on the first important vote in the new Senate, election of its presiding officer.

De la Espriella’s legislative coalition nominated a member of the Partido de la U who is well known for two things: extreme corruption and enmity towards Alvaro Uribe. The Centro Democratico balked, nominating one of its own who was surprisingly elected.

The entire bloc of the Pacto Historico along with 13 others, voted for Uribe’s candidate. Although many people on the left were outraged, the result is likely to be that the Senate is going to be even more chaotic and unmanageable than it already appeared to be.

Los que Nunca y Los que Siempre (Those who have never, and those who have always)

In keeping with his reputation for betraying his friends and allies, De la Espriella has already betrayed the people who voted for him. He campaigned as a political outsider, using as his templates the campaigns of Donald Trump in the USA, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, Javier Milei in Argentina, and Rodolfo Hernandez here in Colombia (the candidate of the Colombian right who lost the 2022 presidential election).

His campaign was built on lies. Knowing that the conservative petty bourgeoisie of the country had turned their backs on the traditional rightwing leadership, he promised to make no deals with the traditional political parties and form a government of “los que nunca” (‘Those who never’ which means something like “the have nots” in English.)

The slogan was a promise to rid the country of the corrupt rightwing politicians while remaining true to conservative values.

His choice of a vice president should have told his voters that this was a lie. The new Vice President, Jose Manuel Restrepo, is a Colombian blue blood who is the descendant of three presidents and was Minister of Finance in the scandal-ridden government of Ivan Duque.

Restrepo appears to be the de facto leader of the new government. Since the election, de la Espriella has disappeared from public view while Restrepo is constantly in the news and is leading the transition team of the new government.

If the choice of Restrepo did not alert de la Espriella’s voter base to his bait and switch game, his cabinet appointments have.

The Cabinet of Los que Siempre (Those who have always)

Party	Name	Ministry	Notes
Cambio Radical*	Elsa Noguera	Minister of Transportation	Key member of the Char family machine, former Mayor, Governor and cabinet minister. Husband is a convicted drug dealer.
Cambio Radical*	Rodrigo Lara Restrepo	Minister of the Interior	Key member of the Char family machine. Long serving member of Congress and the Senate and a former Minister. His father was a Minister of Justice who was assassinated at the orders of Pablo Escobar.
Liberal party*	Mauricio Gómez	Minister of Foreign Commerce	Key member of the Char family machine. Long serving Liberal party member of the Congress and Senate.
Conservative Party, Partido de la U*	Miguel Gómez Martínez	Minister of Finance	Key member of the Pastrana family machine. Long-serving member of Congress and the Senate and minister in the governments of Andres Pastran and Alvaro Uribe. Grandson of Laureano Gomez, the most extreme rightwing President in the history of Colombia.
Liberal Party*	Iván Cancino González	Minister of Justice	Alvaro Uribe’s long-term personal lawyer who also represented Colombian financial oligarchs of the Gilinski family and various corrupt politicians in the Odebrecht scandal.
Partido de la U Alexandra	Falla Zerrate	Minister of Technology, Information and Communications	Vice Minister of Digital Transformation in the government of Ivan Duque.
Independent	María Nohemí Arboleda	Mines and Energy	General Manager of XM which operates the national electrical grid.
Liberal Party, Party of the Regions*	Viviane Morales	Minister of Education	Former Chief Independent Prosecutor, Evangelical leader who is an opponent of public education and favors government subsidies of private schools. Married to Carlos Alonso Lucio López, an M-19 guerrilla who became a paramilitary leader. Convicted by the Supreme Court of fraud and connections to drug dealers. Currently an evangelical pastor.
Partido Colombia Justa Libres and the National Salvation Movement	Jaime Andres Beltran	Minister of Housing	Evangelical pastor, former Mayor of Bucaramanga removed from office for violating election laws, convicted of theft of city property.
Centro Democratico, National Salvation Movement	Retired General Jorge Eduardo Mora López	Minister of Defense	Career military officer closely connected to DEA. Removed by Petro from chain of command after he was investigated, but not convicted, for corruption. Senatorial candidate for the extreme rightwing National Salvation Party. Brother of a commanding general connected to the paramilitaries.
Independent	Fabio Alberto Arjona Hincapié	Minister of the Environment	A supposed environmentalist who supports fracking as well as strip mining of sensitive environments in the Andes.
Defensores de la Patria	Omar Bula Escobar	Minister of Foreign Relations	Lifelong admirer of Laureano Gomez who advocates conspiracy theories about the 2020 US elections, global warming, and the Great Replacement. Career in foreign relations and academia.
Centro Democratico	Indalecio Dangond Baquero	Minister of Agriculture	Family is a major producer of plan oil. Dangond spent his career in the Ministries of Agriculture and Commerce and in public owned banks and credit institutions.
Creemos Colombia	Juliana Gutiérrez	Minister of Sports	Sister of the Mayor of Medellin.
Centro Democratico, Creemos Colombia	Paola Holguín Moreno	Minister of Culture and Art	Former Senator and Advisor to Alvaro Uribe. Her career was in military issues rather than culture and art.

*These cabinet members were longstanding leaders of traditional parties but switched party affiliations to join one of the two tiny extremist parties controlled by De la Espriella, the National Salvation Movement and Defenders of the Homeland.

 

Challenges and opportunities for the left

The struggle against the new government began almost as soon as the election results were announced and will continue on August 7, the day that Abelardo de la Espriella is scheduled to take office and the second of Colombia’s two independence days.

It will be a day of protests announced by the Pacto Historico, starting with civil disobedience in the city of Barranquilla led by Senator Ivan Cepeda.

De la Espriella has threatened a military offensive that is likely to be the way he brings U.S. military into Colombia. He also says he will eliminate corruption from the government by firing and prosecuting every corrupt government official during the same period of time. This will be the cover for his attack on government social services and against unionized government employees.

The threats are likely to be difficult to carry out because the new government will start in a very weak position.

• It has no clear legislative majority, and its base of rightwing parties is fragmented and divided. There are currently 28 parties represented in either the Senate or Chamber or both. The largest is the Pacto Historico which with its allies, the Green Alliance and representatives of smaller parties, is likely to be able to block Se la Espriella’s legislative initiatives as shown by the vote on the new President of the Senate.

• De la Espriella lacks full control of any of the institutions of the state including the military and judiciary.

• There is still a potential that the Constitutional Court will nullify his election.

• There is a growing sense of betrayal by De la Espriella among those who voted for him.

• De la Espriella is unlikely to receive any significant help from his mentors and handlers in the United States.

The first 100 days will be the first test of the left under the new government. Defending itself against repression, legal and illegal, up to and including the possible arrest and deportation of President Petro, will be the first, but not the only priority. The defensive struggle will require a combination of action by the Pacto and its allies in the Senate and the Chamber of Representative with the ongoing fight in the judicial system, but the most important ingredients will be the mobilization on the streets in demonstrations and strike action.

The Pacto Historico and the rest of the left are in a strong position to fight back if they can mobilize those who voted for the Pacto. In the legislative elections held on March 21, the candidates of the Pacto Historico received 4,471,238 votes (21.4%) out of the total of 20,900,614 total cast.

In the first round of presidential voting, the Pacto’s candidate Ivan Cepeda received 9,688,361 votes (31.2%) out of a total of 23,978,304, and in the second round, Cepeda, received 12,708,312 out of a total of 26,344,960 votes cast.

The social base of the Pacto Historico is the urban working class, especially the organized labor movement. While the combined membership of the three union federations, the CUT, CGT and CTC, amounts to only about 850,000 workers out of a working-age population of about 35,000,000, the unions have a huge following beyond their membership because the unions negotiate with the government every year to determine the next year’s annual minimum salary.

Both within and beyond the working class, the Pacto has also grown through the rise of the self-conscious mass movements of Afro-Colombianos, the Indigenous Minga, and the feminist, LGBTQ+ and environmentalist movements.

A good approximation of the ascendant growth curve of the left in Colombia is found in its presidential election results. Over the course of the last seven presidential elections from 2002 to 2026, the left’s candidates progressively increased their vote totals from 680,000 votes (6.6%) to 12,708,712 votes (48.70%).

Beyond surviving threatened repression and defending the gains made during the Petro years, the Pacto faces the challenge of continuing to grow. Its greatest weaknesses lie in its failure to build a membership party, and its failure to develop broad new layers of leaders.

The Pacto is now addressing both of these issues with a membership drive and a drive to recruit candidates to run for local offices from city council seats to the offices of mayors and governors.

To get some idea of the size of this challenge, you only have to look at the fact that currently 142 members of the Pacto serve as city council members out of a total of 12,072 city council members in the country. Their allies, the Greens, have only 10 city council members.

Meanwhile the parties of the right all have hundreds or thousands of council members: the Centro Democratic has 1876; Cambio Radical has 1243; the Partido de la U has 1246; the Liberals have 1834¸the Conservatives have 1710.

Colombia’s left has enormous experience fighting under adverse conditions of violent repression, and it has not only survived but grown to become the most significant political force in this country. Now, the next year will be a serious test of its resilience.