The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, assured on Sunday night that he does not accept the results of the preliminary count of the election day which indicate that Iván Cepeda and Abelardo de la Espriella advance to the second round in the race for the Casa de Nariño.
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“The so-called transmitted count has no binding force; its data are not public norm. As president, I do not accept the results of the preliminary count from the private firm of the Bautista brothers”, stated the president on social media.
His firm decision, as he explained on his X account, is due to the fact that “the algorithms of the counting and scrutiny software in the last week were varied on three occasions and added 800,000 more ID cards of people who are not in the official census presented.”
“There are two censuses at this moment, the official one and that of the Bautista brothers’ software which has 800,000 additional people. The already challenged tables show that hundreds of thousands of votes were added without the existence of voters,” he pointed out.
He then assured: “Therefore and according to the law, the binding results that the president will attend to and accept are those of the scrutiny commissions led by the judges of the Republic”, opposing the work of the Colombian National Registry.
The preliminary count results indicate that De La Espriella gathered 10,351,548 votes, for 43.73% of the total, while Cepeda reached 9,683,743, representing 40.91% of the scrutiny.
According to the media Cambio Colombia, the statement by the South American head of state received strong criticism from local politicians. Among them, the councilman and congressman-elect of the Democratic Center Daniel Briceño, who assured that “Petro wants to stay in power at all costs and here we are to confront him.”
“We will not allow him to mock the electoral result and the will of the people as they already did in 2016 with the plebiscite. All institutions must unite to defend democracy,” he added.
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For her part, Congresswoman Lina Garrido called it “very serious” that the Colombian president does not recognize the voting results. “He wants to steal the elections in the second round and plans to set the country on fire again. Over our miserable corrupt dead bodies”, she stated.
Joining them was former president Iván Duque, who considered that “Petro wants to disregard democracy and the electoral organization,” calling on the international community to “be alert to this threat.”
“We cannot allow this attack against the will of the majority; therefore, the unity of all democrats in Colombia is required to reject this attempt to usurp the people’s victory,” he argued.
In his first speech after the results that placed him in the runoff were known, Cepeda joined Petro in rejecting the preliminary count results and assuring that his movement is “the main political force”.
Likewise, he denounced an alleged “discrepancy” in the electoral census that would reach “855,000 people or ID cards” and asked to “verify,” since “there is information and indications about an undetermined number of tables” in which “atypical voting” would have occurred.
“We are verifying with our security and electoral observation mechanism exactly how many (tables) are involved in which, according to the first reports, atypical voting has occurred”, the leftist candidate indicated.
He then stated that he will only speak about the electoral results “when the scrutiny conditions fully clarify this matter.”
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