SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
An outbreak of terrorist attacks in Colombia has the country on edge ahead of next month's presidential election. Front-runner Ivan Cepeda favors peace talks to end the violence, but rival candidates claim that negotiations have only made things worse. Here's reporter John Otis.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Spanish).
JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Rescue workers searched for survivors after a roadside bomb exploded in southern Colombia on Saturday, leaving a crater 20 feet deep.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: It was part of a wave of attacks by drug-trafficking rebels that killed 21 people. The violence is also stoking a heated debate over security in the run up to the May 31 presidential election.
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IVAN CEPEDA AND UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: Polls show that Ivan Cepeda, speaking here at a campaign rally in the working-class town of Funza, is the clear front-runner. Cepeda is a left-wing senator and close ally of current President Gustavo Petro. Ever since his father, a Communist Party politician, was gunned down by paramilitaries in 1994, Cepeda has been a fierce advocate for human rights and peace talks.
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IVAN CEPEDA: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: In 2016, Cepeda helped convince Colombia's largest guerrilla group to sign a peace treaty. He's also been a key player in the Petro government's so-called Total Peace program. It aims to disarm a new generation of criminal groups involved in drug trafficking, extortion and illegal mining.
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CEPEDA: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: "I call on all the armed groups to follow the path of peace," Cepeda said at the rally. But by most accounts, the Total Peace policy has backfired. Mistakes by inexperienced government negotiators, like declaring ceasefires, allowed the criminal groups to expand their control over the countryside.
SANDRA BORDA: I also think that there's another problem. They are very naive and very disorganized.
OTIS: That's Bogota political analyst Sandra Borda.
BORDA: They don't have a plan, right? I mean, all they keep saying is, we want to talk to them.
OTIS: Partly as a result, the criminal groups have grown from 15,000 to about 22,000 armed fighters under the Petro administration, according to a government report. Yet should he win the presidency, Cepeda is promising more peace talks. Meanwhile, he has offered no coherent military strategy to confront criminal groups, says Adam Isaacson of the Washington Office on Latin America.
ADAM ISAACSON: If he's not a pacifist, he's close to it. So if he suddenly becomes president, Ivan Cepeda ordering even a bombing raid is something that I find hard to imagine.
OTIS: All this has provided an opening for Cepeda's presidential rivals. Among them is Abelardo de la Espriella, a right-wing populist who looks and sounds like Nayib Bukele, the authoritarian president of El Salvador.
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ABELARDO DE LA ESPRIELLA: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: De la Espriella pledges to cancel peace talks with criminal groups, capture or kill their members and build 10 megaprisons in Colombia. For decades, Colombia has veered from peace talks to military offensives and back again. For now, it's unclear which path voters will choose.
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CEPEDA: (Speaking Spanish).
OTIS: With five major contenders in the race, Cepeda, the peace candidate, is unlikely to win more than half the votes needed for outright victory in the first round of voting, and in a June run-off, polls show him running neck and neck with his right-wing rivals. For NPR News, I'm John Otis in Funza, Colombia.
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