Bogota, Colombia – He had the look of a middle-aged schoolteacher, as his back seemed slightly sloped, a grey cardigan hung from his shoulders, and a pair of glasses were perched atop his nose.

A Surprising Rise in the Polls

But as Ivan Cepeda waded through the crowds at a surprise rally on June 3 in downtown Bogota, young supporters thronged to see him.

“Se vive, se siente, Cepeda presidente!” they chanted, and “We live it, we feel it, Cepeda for president!”

Reserved and measured in his rhetoric, the 63-year-old senator may seem an unlikely candidate for Colombia’s highest office.

But since he announced his candidacy in August last year, Cepeda has emerged as the new face of Colombia’s increasingly powerful left wing.

“Cepeda is a candidate who never set out to become president,” said Leon Valencia, a political analyst and author of the biography, Ivan Cepeda: A Life Against Forgetting.

Observers have pointed to comments Cepeda made less than a year ago, expressing ambivalence about running for the presidency.

“Unlike others, this has not been my calling,” Cepeda told the newspaper El Espectador in July, as rumours about his candidacy swirled. “I hadn’t thought about running for president because I respect the office and recognise it as a massive responsibility.”

Political Roots in a Nation Divided

But Cepeda’s presidential bid is the latest turn in a life defined by politics and violence, placing him in the middle of one of Colombia’s most intractable problems: its six-decade-long armed conflict.

In Sunday’s run-off election, Cepeda will face Abelardo de la Espriella, a far-right criminal defence lawyer backed by United States President Donald Trump.

De la Espriella has capitalised on Colombia’s security concerns by promising a hardline approach to crime and conflict; Despite having no political experience or party backing, he has emerged as the election’s frontrunner, winning 43 percent of the vote in the first round.

But Cepeda, who came in second place, has offered a radically different vision for Colombia, focusing instead on bolstering the country’s social programmes and advancing agrarian reforms in a bid to reduce inequality.

He has also promised continuity with the outgoing government of President Gustavo Petro, who has reached his term limit.

Petro’s Historic Pact. A left-wing party, has grown increasingly powerful since his election four years ago. In the March legislative elections. For instance. The group won 25 seats in the Senate and 42 in the House of Representatives — the most of any party in either chamber.

Petro himself has been on an upswing.

As Colombia’s first left-wing president. Petro had seen his public approval ratings slump during much of his term. But in the final months of his presidency, his poll numbers have risen, with the newspaper El Tiempo estimating that 45 percent of Colombians hold a favourable view of him.

“The government has managed to build support among some sectors of the Colombian population, through its social policies and Petro’s forceful rhetoric against the traditional elites,” said Yann Basset, a political analyst and professor at the Universidad del Rosario.

A Legacy of Loss and Activism

But even as Colombia’s left enjoys a moment of rare strength, voters remain divided over whether to continue down the path Petro forged.

Cepeda, the Historic Pact’s presidential nominee, has acknowledged those concerns by promising more substantial change than Petro enacted.

“I want the reforms not only to be deepened and consolidated, but also for them to go further,” Cepeda told journalist Maria Jimena Duzan on her podcast.

Public security has remained a dominant concern in this year’s presidential race, and it is a subject with which Cepeda is intimately familiar.

Growing up in the 1960s and ’70s, Cepeda came of age during a time when the Major Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a left-wing rebel group, was one of several factions fighting the government.

Back then, Cepeda’s parents, Manuel Cepeda and Yira Castro, were both members of the Communist Party. As war raged in Colombia’s countryside, his father advocated for a negotiated solution.

In 1985, peace talks between the FARC and Colombian government gave rise to the Patriotic Union (UP), a leftist party that brought together former fighters and members of the Communist Party. Cepeda’s father was elected as a senator for the UP in 1994.

But less than a year into his term, he was assassinated. Other UP leaders were also killed, allegedly at the hands of state agents working in coordination with paramilitary groups.

For Cepeda, his father’s death marked the beginning of a decades-long career advocating for the victims of the armed conflict.

“He became determined to find his father’s killers and, along that path, the search for the truth became an obsession and the fight for victims his main objective,” said Valencia.

Cepeda was eventually elected to Congress in 2010. On his first day, he arrived with a bucket and a mop, promising to clean up a legislature stained by corruption scandals and paramilitary ties.

On the floor of Congress, he repeatedly confronted Alvaro Uribe, the two-time right-wing president whom Cepeda accused of collusion with paramilitary groups and drug cartels.

A legal battle ensued, ending with Uribe convicted of bribery and witness tampering in July 2025. While the ruling was later overturned, the court case boosted Cepeda’s political standing.

His name was soon among those floated as a possible candidate for the 2026 presidential race.

Cepeda had achieved what no one had before, Valencia, his biographer, said.

Uribe, who pushed a hardline security strategy during his presidency, had faced multiple investigations for alleged paramilitary ties and rights abuses. But he had never before been convicted.

“The only one who could defeat him in court was Ivan,” Valencia said. “He ultimately became a hero to the left and emerged as [President Petro’s] successor after he won the first round of the legal battle against Uribe.”