Petro and Cepeda denounce irregularities and ask for electoral review in Colombia

Colombian President Gustavo Petro and the Historic Pact candidate, Iván Cepeda, questioned this Sunday (31) the legitimacy of the preliminary count of the first presidential round and denounced possible irregularities involving around 800 thousand electoral cards added to the counting system.

“The so-called count transmitted [conteo transmitido] it has no legal force. Your data is not in the public domain. As president, I do not accept the results of the preliminary count of the private company owned by the Bautista brothers [donos da empresa Thomas Greg & Sons]”, stated Petro, after the publication of the result that placed lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella with 43.7% of the votes, against 40.9% for Cepeda.

According to the Colombian president, the electoral system’s algorithms “were changed three times in the last week”, incorporating electoral titles of people “not included in the official census”. Petro stated that “there are currently two censuses: the official one and the one produced by the Bautista brothers’ software, which includes an additional 800,000 people.”

The president of the Unitary Workers’ Central, Fábio Arias, also criticized the company responsible for the investigation. According to him, the Bautista brothers controlled sensitive documents of the Colombian State for decades, “having the database and all the records of 50 million Colombians”.

Petro maintained that only results supervised by the electoral commissions and judges of the Republic will have institutional legitimacy. “The polling stations that have already been contested demonstrate that hundreds of thousands of votes were added without the existence of registered voters,” he declared.

Alongside popular leaders and social movements gathered at the Tequendama hotel, in Bogotá, the candidate for vice president, Aida Quilcué, stated that “our ancestors do not accept today’s result” and defended a rigorous review of the vote. According to her, “it is time to continue moving forward” and prevent “the return of death and exclusion”.

In a speech made to activists of the Historic Pact, Iván Cepeda stated that there are “two very confusing situations” in the electoral process. The first of them, according to the candidate, involves a “lag” in the electoral census of “885 thousand people or ballots”.

Cepeda also denounced “information and evidence about an undetermined number of tables” in which “atypical votes” had occurred. According to him, the Historical Pact will only officially recognize the results after the verification commissions have concluded.

“We are not inventing any kind of excuse for not recognizing results. We are asking, in democracy, that the counting commissions do their work and that we know clearly what, down to the last vote, was the vote we obtained”, he stated.

The candidate also recalled episodes that, according to him, compromised the fairness of the electoral process, such as changing voting locations before internal consultations, decisions by the National Electoral Council against his candidacy and allegations of foreign interference in the Colombian election.

“Authorities, including foreign governments, are interfering in our elections,” he declared, citing the president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa.

Applauded by the chorus of “rights yes, right no”, Cepeda stated that the second round will be a dispute against “the parapolitical, drug trafficking, mafia, plutocratic and corrupt past that the country experienced under the governments of Álvaro Uribe”.

When characterizing his opponent Abelardo de la Espriella, the Historic Pact candidate stated that the lawyer “represents mafia fascism” and accused the Colombian extreme right of trying to dismantle social, environmental and income distribution policies implemented by the current government.

“We will not allow Colombia to be handed over and taken over by the ideology and criminal practices of Creole mafia fascism,” he declared.

At the end of the event, Cepeda called on popular movements, youth and progressive parties to increase mobilization for the second presidential round. “The fight continues and we will triumph,” he stated.

EDITING: Lucas Toth