OPEN LETTER: Dear Colombian Left, Find Your Voice Before De la Espriella

Introduction: A letter to a political family still hesitating

What a silence reveals

Dear Colombian left, I am writing to you because your hesitation says something important about this political moment. According to an article published on July 7, 2026, by El País, you are still searching for the right tone to oppose the new hard-right government led by Abelardo de la Espriella. This is not a trivial weakness. It is the symptom of a wider vertigo: that of a continent where ideological lines are being redrawn faster than parties know how to respond.

You are not alone in this confusion. Wherever a conservative wave takes power after a progressive period, the left-wing opposition must reinvent its language, its alliances and its priorities. But Colombia carries a particular history: that of a country which took decades to move past the logic of armed war, and which risks slipping back into a polarization where tone overtakes substance. Your struggle to formulate a coherent line is not a journalistic footnote. It is a test for Colombian democracy itself.

Why this letter, and why now

I am writing this open letter not to dictate a strategy to you, but to name what is at stake. Abelardo de la Espriella embodies a right that has learned to speak directly to fears, economic frustration and the security fatigue of part of the electorate. Faced with that, an opposition that stumbles loses twice: it loses the immediate debate, and it loses the trust of those who might still listen to it five years from now.

The moment is also regional. Colombia is not an isolated case. Across Latin America, progressive governments have had to face electoral backswings, sometimes brutal ones. What separates oppositions that bounce back from those that fade away is precisely the ability to clearly name what they stand for, without getting lost in mere denunciation of the adversary.

I say this with the caution of an outside observer: an opposition that cannot say what it wants always ends up defined only by what it rejects. And that kind of opposition never wins a second round.

The vertigo of the day after: when a left loses power

The fall is never only electoral

Losing a national election after holding power changes the psychology of an entire political movement. It is no longer simply a matter of seats in Congress or ministerial portfolios. It is a matter of identity: who are you, dear Colombian left, when you are no longer the one governing, but the one that must convince again from the opposition benches? This transition is rarely fast, and it is almost always painful.

According to El País, this search for the right tone is currently running through progressive ranks in Colombia. Some voices favor direct confrontation with the new government. Others argue for a more measured opposition, focused on specific policy files rather than a blanket critique of the new administration. This diversity of positions is not necessarily a problem in itself, but it becomes one if it prevents a clear, audible message from emerging for voters.

The temptation of purely reactive opposition

The most common trap for an opposition freshly removed from power is to define itself solely in reaction to the decisions of the government in place. Every announcement from De la Espriella then becomes an occasion for denunciation, without a positive alternative or a distinct vision of society ever emerging. This dynamic exhausts activists and fails to attract undecided voters, who are looking for a proposal, not a permanent objection.

There is a fundamental difference between criticizing a government and building a credible alternative. The first task is easy and immediately gratifying on social media. The second demands time, internal discipline, and the ability to settle disputes between competing visions within the progressive movement itself. It is this second task that the Colombian left seems to be struggling with for now.

A mature opposition is recognized by its ability to say not only what it fights, but what it would offer instead. Without that, opposition becomes a simple mirror image of the power it criticizes, and voters sense it instinctively.

De la Espriella: the face of a right that learned to speak loudly

A style that grabs attention before substance

Abelardo de la Espriella represents a right that has mastered the codes of contemporary political communication: short sentences, punchy soundbites, head-on opposition to progressive figures. This style is not unique to Colombia; it appears in several democracies where conservative figures have managed to turn popular fatigue into electoral energy. But every national context has its own levers, and understanding the specific mechanisms that power De la Espriella is an essential prerequisite for any opposition that wants to answer him effectively.

The difficulty for the Colombian left is not only to counter specific policies. It is to counter a style of governance that thrives precisely on confrontation. The louder the opposition raises its voice, the more it risks reinforcing the narrative that it is a disconnected elite, unable to accept the verdict of the ballot box. It is a formidable rhetorical trap, and it demands a response that is firm in substance yet measured in form.

What power always reveals

A government, regardless of its ideological positioning, is judged by its actions once in office. That is where the real opportunity lies for a patient opposition: documenting, rigorously, the concrete decisions of the De la Espriella government, their effects on the economy, security and fundamental rights, rather than settling for opposition on principle. This slower approach is also, over time, the more solid one.

That requires a discipline many opposition movements lack in the immediate aftermath of an electoral defeat. The temptation of permanent denunciation is emotionally easier to satisfy than the methodical work of tracking public policy. But it is precisely that methodical work which builds, over several years, the credibility needed to win back voters' trust.

I know of no example anywhere in the world where an opposition has won back power simply by shouting louder than the government in office. Those who come back are always the ones who have patiently documented the gap between promises and results.

Latin America, laboratory of ideological swings

A continent that has been oscillating for two decades

Colombia is inventing nothing new in this political shift. Since the early two-thousands, Latin America has gone through several successive waves: progressive governments carried by the commodities boom, then conservative backswings when economies slowed and corruption scandals broke out, sometimes on both sides of the aisle. This pendulum movement is not unique to one country; it is a structural feature of several democracies in the region.

What varies, however, is the ability of oppositions to learn from their defeats. Some progressive movements have managed to renew themselves with new figures and new programmatic priorities. Others have locked themselves into nostalgia for a bygone golden age, unable to offer anything but a step backward. The Colombian left stands precisely at this crossroads, and the choice it makes in the coming months will shape its trajectory for a long time.

What the West watches, without always saying so

Western democracies follow, often quietly, Colombia's political trajectory — a country strategically important in Latin America for the fight against drug trafficking, regional stability and relations with the United States. A major political shift in Bogotá has repercussions that go beyond national borders, particularly on security cooperation and trade policies with Western partners.

That is also why the way the Colombian left chooses to oppose the De la Espriella government will resonate beyond Colombia's internal debate. A democratic opposition, respectful of institutions even in the fiercest confrontation, sends a signal of political maturity that reassures international partners. An opposition that flirts with the systematic delegitimization of the electoral process sends, on the contrary, a signal of instability.

One would like to believe that a country's internal affairs remain strictly internal. That is never true for a country of Colombia's size and strategic importance. The world is watching, even when no one in Bogotá wants it to.

The trap of surface unity

Fragile coalitions, contradictory messages

One of the most concrete difficulties facing the Colombian left is the very diversity of its coalition. Progressive movements often bring together very different sensibilities: trade unionists, environmentalists, human rights defenders, former combatants reintegrated into political life after the peace accords. This diversity is an asset in government, when broad majorities must be built. It becomes a liability in opposition, when every faction wants to impose its own reading of the defeat and its own response strategy.

Without a minimum of coordination, this diversity turns into cacophony. And cacophony, facing an adversary as disciplined on communication as De la Espriella's camp, is an invitation to political marginalization. The question is not to erase internal differences, but to find the few shared priorities on which the entire coalition can speak with one voice, at least in the opposition's first months.

Discipline as a condition for credibility

This collective discipline is far from obvious in a political movement that has just lost power. Internal rivalries over future leadership sharpen precisely in these moments of strategic vacuum. Every figure who aspires to become the voice of the opposition has a short-term incentive to distinguish themselves from the others rather than build a common message. That is a rational calculation at the individual level, but a destructive one at the collective level.

Escaping this trap requires leadership capable of imposing, at least temporarily, a truce on personal ambitions in favor of a shared strategy. This is a difficult exercise in any political organization, and particularly difficult in a coalition as heterogeneous as that of the Colombian left. But it is an indispensable exercise if it wants to represent a credible alternative to the government in power.

Dear Colombian left, I am not asking you to be unanimous. I am asking you to be audible. These are two very different things, and confusing one with the other is probably your biggest strategic mistake right now.

What Colombia's recent history teaches

From armed conflict to electoral polarization

Colombia carries the legacy of one of the longest internal armed conflicts in Latin America, marked by decades of violence between the state, guerrillas and paramilitary groups. The peace accords signed in the previous decade opened a new but fragile chapter in Colombian political life. This history still weighs on today's debate: every political camp carries, consciously or not, the legacy of that past of armed confrontation, which makes Colombian political language particularly sensitive to accusations of radicalism, in either direction.

It is in this particular context that the Colombian left must find its tone of opposition. Rhetoric that is too harsh risks reviving old fractures. Rhetoric that is too timid risks appearing complicit with policies it considers dangerous. Navigating between these two pitfalls requires a mastery of political language that goes far beyond the ready-made formulas too often found on social media.

The memory of the ballot box as a compass

Colombian voters do not have short memories. They remember the broken promises of previous governments, whether right-wing or left-wing. It is this collective memory that will make any opposition discourse credible or, on the contrary, immediately suspected of political opportunism. The Colombian left cannot simply denounce De la Espriella; it must also own an honest record of its own time in power, with its successes and its failures.

This introspection is probably the most uncomfortable, yet also the most necessary, step on the path ahead. An opposition that refuses to look at itself in the mirror of its own previous governance immediately loses credibility with an electorate that has not forgotten.

History does not forgive political movements that refuse to take stock of themselves. The Colombian left will one day have to answer to its own voters before it can effectively answer De la Espriella.

What the Western world has an interest in seeing emerge

A stable democracy matters more than an ideological victory

From a Western perspective, the central concern is not whether the left or the right governs Colombia, but whether Colombian democratic institutions withstand the tensions that accompany any transfer of power. A left-wing opposition that chooses the institutional path, even in the fiercest confrontation with De la Espriella, strengthens the country's democratic stability. An opposition that chose the systematic delegitimization of institutions would weaken that same stability, regardless of the merit of its substantive criticisms.

This is a principle found across several Western democracies confronted with brutal political alternations: the solidity of institutions matters, over the long run, more than the ideological identity of the party in power at any given moment. Colombia is no different on this point, and the Colombian left has a decisive role to play in preserving that institutional solidity, even from the opposition benches.

A test for representative democracy itself

Beyond the Colombian case, this moment is a test for representative democracy as a whole, at a time when several countries around the world are seeing currents rise that question the very legitimacy of electoral alternation. A left-wing opposition capable of proposing a coherent counter-project, without abandoning its values but without falling into the permanent delegitimization of the government in power, offers a valuable example of democratic resilience.

It is this resilience, more than any future electoral victory, that will determine whether Colombia continues to progress as a stable democracy in a region of the world where institutional stability remains, even today, a fragile achievement rather than a settled fact.

I deeply believe that the best response to a hard right is never a left that abandons the rules of the democratic game. It is a left that respects them better than anyone, precisely to prove that they still work.

What De la Espriella will have to prove too

Power never erases campaign promises

It would be unfair, in this letter, to speak only of the duties of the Colombian left. The new De la Espriella government will also have to answer, sooner or later, for its own campaign promises. A hard right that reaches power promising security firmness and a break with the previous elite quickly finds itself confronted with the complexity of governing a country crossed by structural inequalities and long-standing territorial tensions. This will be, for the Colombian left, the raw material of its future opposition — provided it knows how to use it with method rather than mere indignation.

The voters who brought De la Espriella to power expect concrete results on public security and the economy. If they do not get them, the political space for a credible opposition will naturally widen. But that space will not fill itself: it will take a Colombian left ready to occupy it with a clear message, documented, and above all consistent over time.

Strategic patience as an underrated weapon

Politics rarely rewards impatience. Opposition movements that demand an immediate return to power, without going through the necessary phase of internal rebuilding, almost systematically fail to convince an electorate still marked by the memory of their defeat. Strategic patience is not passivity: it is the ability to choose one's battles, to methodically document the failures of the government in place, and to wait for the moment when the message will truly land.

It is this patience that the Colombian left will have to cultivate in the coming months, without ever giving up defending its core values against a right that will likely show no equivalent patience toward its political opponents.

I wish failure on no one in this story, not even De la Espriella. But I know that power without a serious opposition watching over it always ends up believing itself irreplaceable. And that is exactly the moment it becomes dangerous.

Conclusion: Finding the tone, not just the words

What remains to be written

Dear Colombian left, this letter has no miracle solution to offer you, because none exists. Finding the right tone against Abelardo de la Espriella is not a matter of communication, it is a matter of a clear political project, owned and documented. Colombian voters, like voters everywhere, always end up distinguishing an opposition that builds from an opposition that merely shouts louder than the power in place.

The path ahead of you is long and carries no guarantee of success. But the recent history of several democracies, in Latin America and elsewhere, shows that oppositions which return to power are always the ones that managed to turn defeat into groundwork, rather than permanent resentment. This is a choice that belongs to you, and the world, quietly, is watching what you will make of it.

One last thought

There is no shame in searching for one's tone for a few months after an electoral defeat. The shame would come only from never finding it, from settling permanently into a reactive posture rather than a constructive one. Colombia needs a strong opposition, whatever its political color, so that its democracy stays alive against the authoritarian temptations sweeping several continents at once today.

It is this conviction, more than any partisan sympathy, that motivates this letter. A democracy without a credible opposition is no longer really a democracy. That is why your current hesitation, dear Colombian left, is not only your problem. It is also, a little, ours.

I close this letter with the hope, perhaps naive, that Colombia will once again prove that a young democracy can absorb its sharpest tensions without ever giving in to the temptation of confrontation outside the ballot box.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Editorial positioning

This open letter adopts an editorial line favorable to democratic and institutional resilience, from a perspective generally favorable to Western values of political pluralism. It does not take sides for a specific Colombian ideological camp, but expresses concern over the consequences of an opposition unable to formulate a coherent project, regardless of its position on the political spectrum.

Methodology and sources

The central fact of this letter — the difficulty of the Colombian left in defining its line of opposition against the government of Abelardo de la Espriella — comes from an article published by El País on July 7, 2026. The added historical and regional context (the Colombian armed conflict, the peace accords, pendulum dynamics in Latin America) draws on general, publicly verifiable knowledge, not on specific facts invented for this article. No figure, no direct quote and no specific detail was invented.

Nature of the analysis

This text is an open letter, a genre that allows a direct address and an openly personal tone. Maxime Marquette (MadMax) writes here as a columnist-analyst, with engaged but fact-based judgment. The italicized editorial passages are explicitly identified as personal opinions, distinct from the facts reported through the cited sources.

Sources

Primary sources

Colombia's left seeks to find the right tone for its opposition to De la Espriella — El País, July 7, 2026

Latin America news — Reuters

Secondary sources

Colombia coverage — Al Jazeera

Foreign and regional policy analysis — Foreign Policy

Colombia news — The Guardian

International news — WION