Ghost of far-right paramilitaries hovers over Colombia’s presidential runoff vote

Colombians will choose on Sunday between two men whose lives have been very differently shaped by the militias, and whose visions for the country are poles apart

Whoever wins Sunday’s presidential runoff vote in Colombia, the country’s next leader will have a personal history intertwined with one of the criminal forces at the heart of a decades-long armed conflict that claimed nearly half a million lives.

The lives of Iván Cepeda and Abelardo de la Espriella have, in very different ways, been shaped by their relationship with Colombia’s paramilitaries – private armies originally established by rightwing landowners, drug traffickers, businessmen, mining magnates and politicians to fight leftwing guerrilla groups.