Since the middle of 2021, concerns have been raised regarding the Colombian electoral process. The seven firms that did not qualify in the bidding process for the awarding of the contract of the National Civil Registry, which was intended for the logistic and technological administration of the elections during 2021 and 2022, and the Electoral Observation Mission, MOE, questioned the transparency of the bidding process. The contract was finally awarded to the Unión Temporal Distribución Procesos Electorales 2021, which is made up of 11 firms associated to Thomas Greg & Sons, who have been awarded the contract for at least twelve years.
In October of the same year, when opposition politicians criticized the lack of guarantees for the legislative and presidential elections, the response of Registrar Alexánder Vega triggered concerns: “He who does not feel guarantees, or believes that fraud will be committed, should not run”.
The questioning increased in the first months of 2022 with the changes to the cédula registration process and materialized in the week of March 13, with the legislative elections and the presidential consultations. The huge discrepancies between the pre-count and the scrutiny, the accusations from different sectors of possible fraud and the changes of position of the registrar Vega, are the breeding ground for criticism on the legitimacy of the electoral process.
The Historical Pact warned about possible fraud due to the unusual fact of 29,000 tables without a single vote in its favor, an absence detected by electoral witnesses and Petrismo’s lawyers and which was apparently due to the fact that hundreds of E-14 forms had problems in their filling out. The MOE, a recognized platform of civil society organizations, expressed its objections to the statistical anomaly.
President Iván Duque at the closing of the polling stations declared that: “Those who spoke of fraud have been defeated by the strength of the institutions and by this great capacity to provide information to our country“. He did not imagine that with that phrase he was not going to contradict Petro but his political boss, former president Álvaro Uribe, who invited to ignore the electoral result, something unprecedented in Colombia, while Petro called to defend democracy.
Then came the claim of the Democratic Center, after losing a seat that joined the leftist coalition that, in the first phase of the scrutiny, recovered three seats. Former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, last weekend, tweeted: “These elections leave all distrust. In addition to the inconsistencies, there is the overwhelming vote of Petrismo in drug trafficking areas. This result cannot be accepted”.
President Iván Duque, in view of the voices of disconcert and unconformity of the government party due to the loss suffered at the polls, announced on Monday, March 21, a holiday, that he would convene the Electoral Guarantees Commission for the following day, “with the purpose of giving confidence to the citizenship on the transparency of the electoral process“. At the same time he warned that “it is advisable to consider, on the part of the National Electoral Council, to move forward with a general recount in the Senate election”.
That same Monday 21, in a press conference, Registrar Vega, immediately responding to the claims of Uribism and echoing the President, said that “In order to get to the electoral truth and in accordance with the countless inconsistencies in the E-14 Senate forms and for the country’s peace of mind, I will request tomorrow the recount of all the Senate tables“.
Neither Duque nor Vega reacted when Gustavo Petro asked for a partial recount due to the loss of almost half a million votes of the Historical Pact. Only when Álvaro Uribe and the Democratic Center spoke of “suspicious” results, the registrar saw the need to “get to the electoral truth”.
But the fact is that a complete recount has no constitutional, legal or jurisprudential support. It is not contemplated in the National Constitution, nor in the Electoral Code nor in the laws of the country. According to the jurisprudence of the Council of State, there can only be a recount during the national scrutiny carried out by the National Electoral Council, if the political organizations would have requested the appeal of the result of one or several specific tables. In such case, in the tables not challenged, there is no reason to open the votes deposited, as well as in those tables in which the previous instances accepted the challenges and the necessary recounts were carried out.
That is why the announcement of Vega’s recount raised tempers. Petro said that what the registrar is doing “now is called fraud”. He called the process a “coup d’état” and pointed to a break in the chain of custody of the votes.
That same holiday Monday, Asonal Judicial demanded respect for justice in Colombia. It expressed that the National Government recurrently, while preaching to safeguard the Rule of Law, ignores judicial rulings and delegitimizes the Colombian judiciary, as it happened with the ruling that decriminalized abortion, when Duque said that “5 people could not decide for a whole country“. He made clear that the real scrutiny is the one carried out afterwards by judges and notaries as scrutineers and claveros, who reviewed during the whole week the work of the final count and proceeded to correct the errors and failures detected.
On Tuesday, March 22, the Table of Electoral Guarantees was convened, with the participation of the National Civil Registry, the National Electoral Council, members of the national government and representatives of 21 political parties. Faced with the fact that the great majority was opposed to a complete recount, Registrar Vega changed his position and decided not to ask for it. Suddenly for him the facts were clear: there was an under-representation in the pre-count of some 390,000 votes of the Historical Pact, which was later corrected in the scrutiny. He regretted that the electoral process was “mortally wounded by distrust” and backed down with the argument that he was only seeking to reach consensus, since he “believes in the scrutiny by legal conviction”.
So the worst was avoided. Now everything indicates that the parties will have to abide by the scrutinies to make the claims they consider. Precisely on Wednesday 23rd, the national scrutiny of the Senate began in Bogota. When the scrutiny is over, candidates and parties may resort to the administrative contentious justice.
But another election is coming in two months and these facts have sowed great distrust in the heads of many. The only way to regain the lost confidence in the Colombian electoral system is to insist on the respect and absolute subjection to the National Constitution, to the laws, to abide by the decisions of the judges, to respect the Rule of Law and the rules of democracy, by President Duque and his government party led by his political mentor Álvaro Uribe. And verify every step taken with national and international observation.
Originally published in Spanish in Confidencial.com
