By Jonathan Beltrán, CAMBIO, April 19, 2026
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
The Historic Pact candidate’s program is a map of his determination to achieve social justice. However, in the pages of this extensive proposal for how he seeks to govern the country there are structural reforms and a redesign of institutions that would face multiple financial, legal, and political limitations.
Reading Iván Cepeda’s program, you delve into a labyrinth of 433 pages where profoundly transformative ideas, diagnoses of the country, and an extensive battery of proposals coexist. In this travel, in which the candidate presents his vision of the State and builds his own narrative, he is drawing an ambitious road map whose ideal destination would be the President’s Palace.
The Historic Pact candidate’s governance plan is—by a wide margin— the most extensive of those presented by the 13 party tickets that are on the ballot for the first round. It’s a logbook of Cepeda’s political journey, with specific paths pointing to the continuation of Gustavo Petro’s project and the expansion of the reforms that have defined the first leftist administration.
The document, with the name, “The Power of the Truth”, ties together the speeches he has made in his trips around the country and his proposals for attending to the current crises. In this fabric of ideas and approaches, the text maintains a narrative tone: for every technical term that aims to set down his conduct of government business in the coming four years, seven words loaded with rhetoric emerge to reinforce the discursive weight over the programmatic details.
Most of the 64 concrete proposals included in the program concentrate on subjects like the fight against corruption, the energy transition, the agricultural policy, and the consolidation of peace. In contrast, the subjects of women and gender have a much more discreet presence within the program’s design, in spite of their having been a recurring part of the candidate’s speeches throughout his career.
The program is also marked by two figures that are constantly coming through his narrative: Gustavo Petro and Álvaro Uribe. Their names appear in repeated references in a document that fluctuates between expanding the power of the left and confronting the legacies of previous administrations.
Comparison of Iván Cepeda’s programs with those of his competitors: themes, reach, and ambition
While his rivals offer brief and selective road maps, Cepeda presents a project that aims to leave nothing to chance. His program, besides being the most extensive, is also the one that concentrates on the greatest number of proposals in the areas that the voters have the greatest concern about. On security, for example, he offers at least six specific actions, even though the majority are directly tied to the implementation of the Peace Agreement: reincorporation of the signers, integrated reparations to the victims, and protection of social leaders.
That same logic is repeated in other areas. In agriculture policy and rural reform, the leftist Senator also shows a wide difference with his competitors on issues like land distribution, food sovereignty, and restitution of communal beaches. He also leads in the number of proposals related to energy transition and protection of the environment, a subject that has been left behind in the governance plans by Paloma Valencia, Abelardo de la Espriella, Claudia López, and Sergio Fajardo.
The most recent survey by the National Consulting Center and CAMBIO, revealed that the management of the health crisis appears to be one of the most determining factors for voters when they decide whom to vote for. However, in that key territory of public opinion, Cepeda’s program just offers a central proposal, reform of the health care system, an initiative that after multiple attempts, has not been able to make any progress during Petro’s administration.
The pattern of contrasts is also repeated in other paragraphs of the program. In education, anticorruption, and social policy, the Senator deploys a broad pack of initiatives that would fortify his intention to embrace differing levels of government intervention. However, in areas like gender the offer is much more reduced, with just three specific proposals, an item reflecting a tendency that we also see in a good number of the men and women aspiring to be President.
How viable is Iván Cepeda’s program for governance?
An important segment of the proposals that the Historic Pact candidate puts together in his plan is facing serious questions about its viability because it lacks budgeted funds that would be required to get it under way, or the amount of time that could be expected to take, or the need to negotiate complex legislative processes to make a campaign promise into an effective public policy.
In the middle of a program loaded with structural efforts and long term reforms, there are also proposals whose accomplishment looks much more immediate. That’s the case with the austerity measures that Cepeda proposes, like reducing the number of foreign trips, subsidies, and special benefits, even eventual cuts in official salaries. Unlike other initiatives that depend on the Congress, these decisions could remain directly in the President’s hands and get their start in the first days of the administration through decrees and administrative guidelines.
In the fringe of proposals having a greater margin for execution, some also call for continuation of social programs advanced by the Petro administration like Colombia Mayor (Elder Colombia), the subsidy directed to older adults in vulnerable situations. Dealing with a policy that already has an institutional structure, criteria of coverage, and systems for defined transfers, making it permanent will not require any new governmental architecture for the next administration.
At the other extreme, we see proposals that face a much more complicated outlook. The revision of spending in all branches of the government, for example, doesn’t only depend on the President’s Palace, and will immediately clash with the administrative autonomy and budgeting of the Congress, the high courts, and the agencies of control. The same thing happens with initiatives like the creation of a National Anticorruption System, which would require the defining of a new authority so as not to overlap with powers that now rest with agencies like the Attorney General’s Office and the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Even more uphill is the proposal to eliminate the National Electoral Council that kept Cepeda from participating in the Front for Life Consultation Referendum. Eliminating this entity would require amending Article 264 of the Constitution and obtaining the approval of a majority of the Congress to change the system. “Changing the electoral authority is not just to dismantle an institution, but to redefine the rules of oversight and control,” former Registrar Juan Carlos Galindo explained to CAMBIO.
Added to this group of highly complicated initiatives are the electoral reform, a change in the war on drugs model, and the voluntary disarmament of armed groups. In these three cases, their viability depends on decisions that exceed the President’s immediate orbit. There would be debates in areas criss-crossed by the resistance of traditional political parties, and getting it underway would take longer than one President’s term.
The inheritance of change: where does Petro’s plan end and Cepeda’ begin?
Comparing Gustavo Petro’s program in 2022 with Iván Cepeda’s in 2026 is, in good part, continuing in the footsteps of the same political journey. The Senator’s plan collects the banners that brought Historic Pact to power: agrarian reform, promoting peace, expanding social policy, and a foreign policy with more active leadership in more global issues.
However, more than just repetition, Cepeda’s project is a broader version of what was put forth four years ago. While Petro centered his 2022 plan with the promise of initiating change, Cepeda now looks to taking on the role of shielding the progress that has been reached so as to raise the stakes in areas like land redistribution, food sovereignty, and “a lifesaving economy”.
Coming from the campaign, this reading is based on an idea: it’s not about starting at zero, but rather to correct the direction and to deepen what has been done. “There has been progress that can’t be lost, but also lessons about how to join the parts of the administration together better, build more cohesive teams, and speed up the capacity for execution in the Ministries,” a member of the Cepeda campaign explained to CAMBIO.
In the end, the question left by the leftist Senator’s program is not how many proposals will fit into 433 pages, but how many of them can get through the budget, political, and legal filters to get to reality from a road map that designs a second term for the progressives’ project.