Abelardo de la Espriella sent a heartfelt letter to his followers. He did it, according to him, “breaking with all the political strategy manuals of that old politics that has gotten us into this mess of contradictions and cowardly calculations.”
The candidate, who has called himself the Tiger, warns that they want to get him out of the way. And he says up front that the right-wing candidates for the presidency seek to exclude him from the March presidential consultation. “I’m a kid who doesn’t roar for power, but to defend the country,” he says of himself.
The criminal lawyer assures that in these petty politics, others forget that there is only one enemy to defeat. ““I, convinced as I am that only unity will lead us to defeat the only enemies I recognize: Petro and his accomplices,” he assures.
And for this reason, he proposes that there is only one person against whom he represents Gustavo Petro. “I said clearly that if there is a candidate who is more welcomed by the people, I will join him or her as a soldier of the cause. I said it and that is how I will fulfill it.”
De la Espriella assures that this idea had caught on until he began to rise in the internal polls that have circulated on social networks and that, due to the fear of seeing him winning, the other candidates on the right no longer want to measure themselves against him.
“Now they put together a union, but a union without me. A consultation: they ask each other and they answer themselves too. Yes, consultation yes, but without De La Espriella, without El Tigre. Candidates who should be thinking about facing Petro join the chorus, calling me an extreme populist in veiled interviews,” he adds.
And in the end he concludes that a Toconabe is lived: Everyone with Abelardo.
This is the full letter:
“Dear Defenders of the Homeland, Colombians with big and indomitable hearts, today I wanted, breaking with all the political strategy manuals of that old policy that has gotten us into this mess of contradictions and cowardly calculations, to share with you one of the strategic analyzes that we have done within my campaign for the Presidency of the Republic and tell you, face to face and without filters, the strategy that we are going to execute.
I, Abelardo De La Espriella, am a kid who does not roar for power, but to defend the country, the one we love so much. And for that reason, because this campaign is not mine, but of all of us, of the patriots of the people tired of nothing changing, I have decided to share with all of you the strategic line of our democratic crusade.
I do not come to sell you smoke or to recite empty promises; I come to dissect in the flesh the current state of my campaign, because if there is one thing that defines me, it is extreme coherence: saying what I think, doing what I promise and uniting, not out of convenience, but out of love for Colombia. As appropriate, Colombia first for Colombians, second for Colombians, third for Colombians, fourth for Colombians.
At the beginning, when this project was barely a whisper in the digital surveys and on the streets of the country, everyone asked for unity. And I, then and today too, remain convinced that those of us who defend values must unite: family, faith, the Constitution, the law, the Public Force, private property and Christian morality based on firm principles. Everyone has cried out for union. And I, convinced as I am that only union will lead us to defeat the only enemies I recognize: Petro and his accomplices.
I offered that union and I offer it around any candidate who, with the blessing of the people, can defeat that enemy of democracy and freedom. The message of unity that everyone was talking about was very well received at first, and I joined the call for unity with an open soul. I said clearly that if there is a candidate who is more welcomed by the people, I will join him or her as a soldier of the cause. I said it and so I will fulfill it.
What do we talk about unity? We must unite! You have asked for unity, and the voice of the people is the voice of all. Everyone is welcome here, except Gustavo Petro and his friends. I bought that idea because I believe in it: only unity saves us.
But do you know what happened, my dear compatriots? That call for unity was liked at first, but it lasted as long as a green mango with salt and lemon in front of the door of a school in the Colombian Caribbean: it lasted until my numbers began to skyrocket in the preference of the citizens of the Colombian people.
In the networks, in the streets, in the marches, in the meetings, in the surveys—which, although they are prohibited from being published, the country knows because they circulate every Sunday on WhatsApp and social networks—the real pulse of the people is felt there. And then I began to rise in popular popularity, and I went from being the outsider to being the only viable option of extreme coherence to defeat the enemy of democracy: Petro and his accomplices.
And there, Defenders, the problem began. The mess started. Let me draw you a timeline, not with resentment or problem, but with the clarity of someone who has seen the soul of politics from the inside.
Look: in August, just three weeks after launching my campaign—I am taking this step for Colombians, for my children and for the future that we all deserve—I do not see it as a sacrifice, but as a moral duty. When the first numbers began to put me on par with those who had been candidates for almost a year, direct and lying attacks against me automatically began. They wanted to destroy me, and they want to continue doing it because of my work as a lawyer.
They tried to confuse the people, selling the sacred right to defense as if that were an unworthy and illegal task for those who aspire to defend. I want to give you a historical fact: look, John Adams, the second president of the United States, was above all a defense lawyer, and one of the most brilliant of his time in the American colonies. After the Boston Massacre, John Adams defended not the Americans, but the British soldiers accused of murdering American settlers during a protest there. Despite enormous popular pressure—because anti-British sentiment was very strong—Adams accepted the case and demonstrated that justice should be above emotion or politics.
Let’s not go that far. Here, in Colombia, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, criminal lawyer and surely president of Colombia, was murdered after finishing a murder trial upon arriving at his office in Bogotá.
In my case, my detractors desperately try to delegitimize the exercise of the right to judicial defense, because the worst criminal of all is the judicial official who ignores the law to fabricate evidence and persecute an innocent person. That same law has allowed me to fight for the innocent and for justice, without looking at colors or ideologies, as if the lawyer were the same as the defendant; as if the doctor could refuse to treat a patient because of what that patient had done or not done in his or her entire life. That’s absurd.
I responded, my dear compatriots, with an open hand, and said: “If you lead, I will join.” But that outstretched hand was of no use, my open heart. In mid-August, at the height of my calls for unity, the attacks intensified. Is that a coincidence? Obviously not.
The numbers went up and up because those who attack me have belittled the citizens. They have not read the Colombian people; They mistakenly believe that the people are stupid and do not understand that the lawyer is not the same as his client, that defense is a sacred right, even provided free of charge by the State when the person has no way to pay.
The people understood that with me they have a defender who has no owner other than the people themselves, that no one manages me, that I have no other agenda than to save and rebuild the country.
And what happened in September? That was the month of the most systematic harassment of someone who has been a lawyer for controversial people. In mid-September the attacks intensified, one after another. My ethics were questioned; They revived rehashes that had already been ruled on by justice. They tried to impose past shadows, like my defense of Alex Saab. They accused me of not being transparent, of being a paper tiger, a clown, a charlatan.
I see Abelardo as a jerk… all those who called me to unity joined in, but against me, against the tiger. I, who was 100% acquitted by justice, say: if there is proof of what they say, I will withdraw from the campaign. The response was silence. They slandered me.
He, in his lifelong profession as a lawyer, decided to work for bandits, earn a lot of money and become a millionaire with the two tigers, without proof or support. And then they were silent.
At the end of September, the low blows increased again: edited videos, decontextualized, with testimonies denied by the protagonists of those stories themselves. I charged fees as a lawyer, as the lawyer who follows my justice process charged me, and as the lawyer here in the United States charged me, as the immigration lawyer charged me. Because I don’t know the first lawyer who works hard.
They accused me again with lies and without evidence of having wineries. Look, I don’t believe in wineries. That is not a mechanism to obtain popular favor, which is what I am looking for. The wineries only serve to fill the pockets of those who sell smoke to candidates who lack self-esteem and need to deceive their own ego.
It’s not my case. I don’t have wineries and I want to clarify that. If you have evidence about that, remember that you are talking to a lawyer. Therefore, I do not pay wineries.
We are facing a political phenomenon that is expanding at atomic speed. There is no economic movement behind it; At least the payment is not reaching all of us who were caught by this tsunami. What’s more, my campaign is so, but so atypical, that they cannot believe that the support on networks is real and organic. They may believe that I have not paid for a single bill, that I do not buy signatures, that I do not ask for or receive money or financing.
I have said it publicly: I am financing the campaign with my own resources. Look, I’m risking my life, I’m risking my assets, because I’m financing the campaign. And for me, my money is returned by the replacement. What is the problem? That I do not pay digital bill; that everything here is volunteered.
“Hello, I am María Paula. I tell you that I have a citizen voice. Nobody pays me; they don’t pay me five cents for this activity throughout my heart. As Abelardo says: firm for the country. I am Marina García. I am not a winery. I am firm for the country. Up Colombia!”
Fervor, passion and hope of you, the Defenders of the Homeland: that is what there is.
Little by little, the pre-candidates who have always been in the shadow of politics, living off the State, began to murmur in business forums, positioning themselves as the moderates and me, the extremist – according to them.
I think Abelardo’s language is a little more extreme. Of course I’m not a moderate. How wrong they are! How clumsy to read the people. The people do not want a moderate, a politically correct one, because they need a leader with balls who will come to ardently confront the enemies of the country, the unpunished criminals who took over the Presidency of the Republic and the Congress; to the drug traffickers who dominate the regions; to terrorism; to the gangs that control the cities; to the politicians who have stolen health, who bankrupted the treasury and who have the poor in misery, while criminals in Colombia enjoy total and absolute impunity.
Meanwhile, with machinery and contacts from Washington, they filtered doubts about my independence and my transparency, without even realizing that the American government granted me American citizenship a few years ago, after analyzing my entire professional, business and private life.
Why the attacks? Because he was already first in all the polls, in all the polls. The people hug me in the squares, not for money, but for fervor, for patriotism.
And in October, this month we are already in, is the culmination, the top of the box of attacks. The establishment, that monster of tied interests, has mutated the attack into a move that turns out to be masterful for them.
At least it doesn’t represent me. I would like someone who does not have that closeness to the world of drug trafficking, or to paramilitaries. No, I don’t like Abelardo De La Espriella. I have seen it clearly and I believe that, furthermore, she is not the right person for him.
Now they form a union, but a union without me. A question: they ask each other and they answer themselves too. Yes, consult yes, but without De La Espriella, without El Tigre.
Candidates who should be thinking about facing Petro join the chorus, calling me an extreme populist in veiled interviews. “And this cannot be resolved by shouting, or with raised fists, or with aggression. This is not clowning.”
Others, with their network of lobbies at the cocktail parties of Bogotá clubs and in Medellín, spread the word that I am too volatile for investors.
Man, it’s a TOCONABE: all against Abelardo. Everyone against Abelardo, for one reason: I am the only one who has made real communion with the town, with the people. I have no ties, I do not accept support in exchange for favors, I do not ask for or receive a peso from groups.
My campaign is mine, from my own resources and from the soul of the Colombians. Hundreds of thousands of you collaborate with what you can. Some put fences on the roads; others sew t-shirts; others buy them; others collect signatures, print posters and go door to door seeking signatures and advocates. Artists create jingles that resonate on TikTok; Content creators generate thousands of viral pieces that are not made with bots, but with passion and love for Colombia.
That has the establishment scared because I don’t owe anything to anyone: only to God, to the country, to my family, to you, the Defenders, to the Colombian people.
Why this merciless siege against me? Because in a sea of candidates tied to political and economic debts, I am free: the tiger that is not tamed, the one that would bomb guerrillas without any mercy, the one that would spray coca without hesitation, the one that would gut the story of Petrism in its fourth meaning, without half measures.
The establishment wanted a tamed right. And to me, the people give me wings so that we can unite in an extreme coherence that does not negotiate with the devil or kneel.
Compatriots, this dissection is necessary for you to understand what is happening. I remain convinced of the union; I don’t burn bridges with anyone, I don’t recognize any enemies other than Petro and his accomplices.
But let it be clear: my union is with the people, with the candidate who achieves the favor of that people.
If you, compatriots, agree, that will be my strategy. I want to listen to them, I want to read them in their comments, on the networks, in the meetings. Is that the union you want, that of the Tiger with…?
Look, I am breaking the canons because politics can no longer tolerate lies or false speeches of unity. Unity is done, not said. Unity is with the people, not with the politicians, nor with the cocoas, nor with the lounge heliotropes in the social clubs.
This is strategic analysis from one side of the spectrum. Next week I will share with you the movements of the left, whose attacks will soon come against me, full of what they know how to do: lie.
But with me the fight has another price: I was late to the distribution of fear. I am firm with the people.
The attacks, on the contrary, slip me away. The important thing is democracy, institutions and freedom. I endure everything for Colombia. I don’t care that they defame me, I don’t care that they tell so many lies about me.
What matters to me is saving Colombia from communism, from Petrism. And that is why, today more than ever, I am firm with the people and firm for the country.”
