A Colombian judge has ordered far-right presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella to immediately stop using the Colombian national football team jersey in his campaign activities, in a ruling that has reignited a heated debate over the political appropriation of national symbols.
Judge Aura Luz Forero issued the provisional order on Thursday, prohibiting De la Espriella from wearing, displaying, or referencing the jersey, its colours, or emblems in any campaign-related setting — including social media, broadcast appearances, and public events. The ruling, which took effect immediately, was triggered by a complaint from citizen Wilman Ramiro Bocanegra Calderón, who argued that the jersey's use by the campaign made him feel discriminated against and stigmatised. The judge concluded that the practice "creates an identification of the national team with a specific candidacy and compromises the neutrality of national symbols," effectively assigning the shirt a meaning beyond the one for which it was designed.
De la Espriella, a lawyer whose client list has included paramilitaries and drug traffickers, adopted the jersey as a campaign staple just one week before the first round of the presidential election, held on 31 May. He went on to encourage supporters to wear the tricolour to the polls — and a significant portion of his more than ten million voters, representing 43.74% of valid votes, did so. He finished nearly three percentage points ahead of Iván Cepeda, the candidate backed by President Gustavo Petro, and the two will face each other in a run-off on 21 June. The result is widely considered a remarkable achievement for a first-time candidate at the national level.
The strategy closely mirrors a pattern seen in Brazil, where the national yellow jersey was adopted by the right during the 2013 protest movements and became a partisan symbol — so strongly so that left-wing voters began re-appropriating it with added insignia to distinguish themselves. In Colombia, the left has pushed back in similar fashion: Cepeda's supporters have printed football sticker-album-style cards bearing the senator's face, and a Bogotá football portal announced it would hold a screen-printing session in a city square, stamping shirts with images of Colombian left-wing icons such as indigenous leader Manuel Quintín Lame and singer Totó la Momposina. The Colombian Football Federation has also called on all campaigns to refrain from using the national team's symbols for electoral purposes.
The jersey controversy is not the only legal trouble facing De la Espriella this week. A separate judge ordered him to apologise publicly for comments made during a YouTube interview in which he pressured the sole female journalist on a panel to comment on his genitalia. Judge Xinia Navarro ruled that the remarks projected "the idea that women would make political decisions motivated by physical attraction to a candidate, not based on rational, programmatic or ideological considerations typical of autonomous citizenship." De la Espriella offered a formal apology on Thursday — while wearing the national team jersey.