Iván Cepeda wins the Historic Pact nomination after winning the party referendum.

Iván Cepeda became the official candidate for the 2026 presidential elections of the Historic Pact this Sunday, after winning the partisan consultation by more than one million votes.

(Read: Consultation on the Historic Pact: Low participation and complaints marked the day ).

Cepeda obtained more than 64% of the vote, a comfortable victory over Carolina Corcho, who barely had 29% of the vote.

Votes for Daniel Quintero, who withdrew from the race several weeks ago, were also counted, but he did not exceed 7% .

(See: The Hidden Cost of Politics: How Election Financing Affects Taxes .)

"Democracy prevails and we must obey it. The people have freely chosen. And now it's up to Colombian society to decide what to do, whether backward or forward," Gustavo Petro said on his X account.

Cepeda, a 63-year-old philosopher and human rights defender, won the primaries of the Historic Pact party against Carolina Corcho, Petro's former health minister, according to the count .

Before the first round of presidential elections, scheduled for May 31, he will compete in other elections against leftist figures to determine a single candidate. "Democracy prevails," "the people have freely chosen," Petro responded on the X network.

Cepeda is a declared enemy of former President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) and, like Petro, denounced in Congressional debates the alleged relationship between paramilitaries and the former president and other politicians.

Last August, following a lengthy judicial process stemming from these accusations, Uribe was sentenced to 12 years of house arrest for bribing members of these anti-guerrilla squads to deny their ties.

PORTFOLIO