Two presidential campaigners have been killed in Colombia as elections near Crime Stories

Colombia’s civil rights office said violence could hamper ‘the exercise of political freedom’ ahead of a May vote to replace Gustavo Petro.

Two presidential campaigners have been killed in Colombia two weeks before the South American country’s elections.

The killing was announced by right-wing presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, who said gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on the victims in the central Meta region on Friday night.

In a letter to X television, de la Esperiella said the two workers “walked the streets to defend democracy, freedom, and the hope of millions of Colombians”.

“Their only crime was believing in the Fatherland and not bowing down to violence,” the candidate added.

A Colombian human rights activist named Rogers Mauricio Devia Escoba, the former mayor of Cubarral, and his adviser Eder Fabian Cardona Lopez as those killed.

The office also said that another attack was carried out on a former mayoral candidate in the area, without giving further details.

Although the protests are still under investigation, the ombudsman warned that they could affect “the exercise of political freedom and democratic participation” in the upcoming elections on May 31.

“Violence, intimidation, and threats of any kind reduce social tensions, increase the threat to political and social leadership, and weaken democratic unity,” the office said.

Meta has long been a haven for criminals and the country’s cocaine trade. Violence is more crime He has been prominent in the presidential race to replace the country’s first left-wing leader, Gustavo Petro.

The front-runner in the presidential race, left-wing Senator Ivan Cepeda, has promised to continue the studies organized by Petro, who advocated solutions to the Colombian conflict.

De la Espriella, by contrast, has shaped himself as a right-wing populist leader like El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Argentina’s Javier Milei.

Polls show him polling again with more than 20 percent of voter support, followed by center-right Senator Paloma Valencia.

Cepeda, meanwhile, is heading into the first round of voting with between 37 and 40 percent support. The number of 14 candidates He has been registered in the presidential race since March.

At least three people are reportedly receiving death threats. All guides travel with heavy protection.

Last year, Cepeda’s vice president, human rights activist and state senator Aida Quilcue, was briefly abducted by a rebel group that broke away from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

It was among the opposition groups that refused to sign a 2016 accord with the government, in which the FARC – the largest left-wing rebel group at the time – agreed to disarm.

Miguel Uribe, senator and presidential hopeful, was also shot during the June 2025 meeting in Bogota. He died of his wounds two months later, in August.