Colombia lives with election skepticism 70 days before the presidential election

Jaime Ortega Karaskal

Bogot, March 20 (EFE) .- A problem that did not appear in Colombia’s Assembly elections on March 13: Doubts about the transparency of its electoral system after its failure to count the Senate and Chamber votes, 70 days before the crucial presidential election.

The first opposition left-wing coalition came from a historic deal, denouncing it as “fraudulent” and not even a single vote appeared on the approximately 29,000 tables, which is a clear impossibility because not only are they equal to 25% of the total, but that force also recorded the most votes last Sunday.

That complaint, and similar complaints from other parties, call into question the impartiality of the National Register of Elections, the body that conducts the election, which has not yet clarified what happened a week later, and analysts say it is the cause of various “errors.” I agree that we can not talk about “fraud”.

Until now, National Registrar Alexander Vega has not provided definitive answers as to what happened, raising concerns about the correctness of the electoral system when the country is on the verge of a presidential election that could change its political course.

On May 29, Colombians will return to the ballot to elect a president, and will do so again on June 19, if a second round is needed. Chairman of the Historical Agreement.

Leftists are recovering votes

The post-election survey added nearly 400,000 votes to the historic agreement in the Senate, giving it three more seats out of a total of 19, but this opened the door to claims by parties whose votes were reduced. The uribista Democratic Center yesterday demanded a recount of votes and dropped suspicions that the votes may have been altered by the arbitrators of the tables.

“Under these conditions, no candidate should be declared elected until the total number of votes cast in the general election has been re-elected.

Colombian democracy, with its shortcomings, has not experienced such a situation for more than 50 years, with the government maneuvering in the 1970 presidential election to win over conservative Michel Pastrana over retired General Gustavo Rojas Finila, who led the vote. .

Many years later, the guerrilla movement that allegedly rigged those elections formed on April 19 (M – 19), which got its name from the date the elections were said to have taken place and the date Pedro was a member.

The implication of fraud

Coincidentally or not, on February 3, former President Andrs Pastrana and Michel Pastrana’s son, Pedro Madrid, spoke to members of Spain about their departure. Multinational Indira provides the site for the study.

“Pedro should clarify to the country before the election the reasons for Pedro’s suspicious meeting in Madrid today with the head of Indira, a contractor and software provider for the Registrar’s Office and the National Electoral Council,” Pastrana wrote.

Indira has repeatedly promised “the security of the electoral process,” but Pastrana insists that Pedro and the registrar “have saved half a million votes and exited from one day to the next.”

What is even more surprising is that Pastrana’s initial complaint was accepted by Vice President and Vice President Marta Lucia Ramirez, who, in a letter to Vega, expressed his concern about the lack of guarantees in voting abroad, which depend on two official agencies: the Registrar’s Office and the Foreign Office.

In view of the uncertainty surrounding the process, President Ivan Duke has called for a meeting of the Election Guarantee Schedule for next Tuesday, which will include the Registrar’s Office and the National Electoral Council, as well as the government, participating political parties and movements. Creatures and election observers.

Whatever the outcome of that meeting, after all that has happened, it is very difficult not to compete with allegations of fraud by those who lost the presidential election results, which indicates in a turbulent country like Colombia. . EFE

joc / jga / yes

© EFE 2022. Redistribution and rebroadcasting of all or part of the contents of Efe’s Services is strictly prohibited without the prior and express permission of Agencia EFE SA.