The progressive Historic Pact (PH) coalition will be the biggest political force in Colombia’s National Congress for the 2026-30 period after increasing its number of seats in legislative elections on Sunday 8 March. Projections indicate the PH, whose current leader is President Gustavo Petro, will fill between 23 and 25 of the 103 Senate seats, up from 20 in the last period, having obtained over a million votes more than in the 2022 elections. In the House of Representatives, the lower chamber in Congress, the PH took 42 out of 183 seats. The results provide a solid basis for advancing reforms in alliance with other political groups.
However, the PH remains a long way from obtaining a senatorial majority, which requires 55 seats. Its main rival will be the hard-right Democratic Centre (CD) party, founded by former president Alvaro Uribe. The CD significantly boosted its representation in the Senate, from 13 seats to a final number likely to be between 16 and 18. The two results are an indication of the polarisation of Colombian politics.
Among the successful PH candidates was trade unionist María Eugenia Londoño, an Executive Committee member of the FECODE teachers’ federation. ‘With the campaign team, we crossed the country from end to end, to embrace those who have nothing, to embrace those who are hungry, to listen to farmers who have nothing to eat, to our boys and girls who have to get to school,’ she told supporters following her victory.
However, there was bad news for the Comunes Party, formed by former FARC guerrillas. They will no longer receive the 10 seats guaranteed under the 2016 peace agreement, and they failed to win the minimum number of votes required to be recognised as an official political party. A Comunes statement said: ‘We reaffirm our undeniable commitment to comprehensive implementation of the Final Peace Agreement and we make available our political will, our organisational work and our territorial commitment to continue contributing to a country that is fairer, more inclusive and at peace.’
Both left and right will seek to build alliances with other political groups to further their political agendas. The lack of a majority has been a problem for the Historic Pact under Petro, as right-wing opposition groups have repeatedly blocked the government’s social reforms and other progressive legislation. This has forced the government to water down some of its reforms, such as removing collective bargaining rights from the labour reform.
After the PH and the CD, the parties with the most votes are the Liberal Party, one of Colombia’s traditional establishment vehicles, and the centrist Alliance for Colombia coalition, formed of the Green Party and the Independent Social Alliance among others. They have secured a projected 13 and 11 Senate seats respectively. They are followed by the other establishment party, the Conservative Party, which won around ten seats, and the Party of the U, with eight.
Attention now turns towards May’s presidential election, and Historic Pact candidate Iván Cepeda, who has consistently topped polls since winning his party’s primary last October. His likeliest rival now appears to be the Democratic Centre’s Paloma Valencia, who in Sunday’s primary emerged from a plethora of conservative and far-right figures to take an unexpectedly high tally of 3.2 million votes. The next highest total was won by centrist Juan Daniel Oviedo. The two shared a platform together following the results, fuelling speculation that they will form an alliance, with several other right-wing candidates having now backed Valencia. It means that, despite former president Uribe failing to win a Senate seat, the CD has repositioned itself as a major political force after a difficult period following the repression and corruption associated with its last government, that of Iván Duque between 2018-22. The CD is likely to be further strengthened by support from the United States, which on 7 March hosted a ‘Shield of the Americas’ meeting in Florida for the region’s far-right political leaders.
For far-right populist Abelardo De La Espriella, a former mafia lawyer who models himself on Donald Trump and El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, it was a disappointing result, gaining only 700,000 votes. Some analysts had predicted De La Espriella to be the right’s likeliest candidate in the presidential elections. However, he could seek to position himself as an outsider, hoping to benefit from any potential voting split in the first round, such as occurred in 2022 with TV personality Rodolfo Hernandez, who eventually lost out to Petro.
Centrist candidates Claudia López and the former ambassador to Britain, Roy Barreras, also fared less well than they had hoped.
Celebrating the Historic Pact’s success in the congressional elections, Iván Cepeda told a rally: ‘What we have felt in the country, what we have experienced, is confirmed today at the ballot boxes and at the voting tables: we are the main political force in Colombia.’ While the results raise optimism of a continuation of progressive governance in Colombia, the movement for peace and social justice will face a concerted challenge to turn these hopes into a reality.