Bogotá, Mar 18 (EFE) .- The nearly 400,000 votes for the Senate list of the left-wing coalition Historical Pact that were not initially counted in last Sunday’s elections have called into question the credibility of the Colombian Registry, that this Friday published the results of the vote.
However, this entity, which organizes the elections in the country, far from clarifying the reasons why all those votes and those of other parties were not counted, maintains a shroud of mystery about what happened, an attitude that disconcerts the citizens who expect shocked clear answers.
The preliminary count on Sunday gave the Historical Pact 2,302,847 votes in the Senate, while the official results published today by the Registrar, with 97% counted, give them 2,692,999 votes, that is, 390,152 more, being the party with the largest difference between the two data.
The projections show that with this result the Historical Pact can obtain 19 seats in the Upper House, three more than those obtained in the pre-count on Sunday and that would subtract one seat from the Conservative Party, which would be left with 15; the ruling Democratic Center and the Alianza Verde-Centro Esperanza Coalition, which would drop to 13 each.
CRITICISM TO THE REGISTRAR
In the eye of the hurricane is the national registrar, Alexander Vega, who argues that what happened is due to “human errors” that they are correcting in the scrutiny.
Despite the fact that the electoral observation missions that accompanied the process agree that there is no talk of fraud so far, politicians from various currents have asked Vega for explanations and demand that he resign because they consider that he does not offer guarantees for the presidential elections of the next May 29.
“If the seats are recovered and if the scrutiny is rigorous, then we hope that the problems will be corrected,” Iván Cepeda, a senator elected by the Historical Pact, told Efe, adding that “a situation has arisen in which there are very unfortunate”.
From the other ideological shore they also ask for explanations, since the ruling Democratic Center party described as “unacceptable the situation of uncertainty generated by the inaccuracy of the results published to date by the Registrar’s Office.”
“The inclusion of 948,283 votes (from all parties) in the scrutiny phase overwhelms the variation between precount and scrutiny, which has historically been 0.5% and this time is more than 7%,” said the Democratic Center, led by former president Álvaro Uribe.
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Uribismo asked Vega to explain the reason why “said gap benefits only one political party while the rest of us witness the loss of seats without sufficient information to counteract it.”
“Whether due to incompetence or because there were really serious alterations in the results of Congress, the registrar Alexander Vega must resign. The presidential elections need an ad hoc registrar and that adjustments be made as soon as possible,” said Catherine Juvinao, representative to the elected Chamber of the Alianza Verde party.
Vega defended the actions of the Registrar’s Office and also assured that one cannot speak of fraud and, on the contrary, the errors are being corrected in the official count that is always done in the week following the elections.
HYPOTHESIS OF OBSERVATION MISSIONS
The Electoral Observation Mission of the European Union (EU EOM), which described the differences between the pre-count and the count as “unusually large”, stated that the Historical Pact, “by presenting closed lists” was harmed “in the design of the records of results, the E-14 forms”, which was “extremely complex and very prone to errors”.
That, warns the EU EOM, contributed to the fact that the votes of this coalition, of which the main parties of the Colombian left are part, were not counted in “a good number of tables.”
Precisely the Electoral Observation Mission (MOE), an NGO that has been monitoring the elections in Colombia for 15 years, denounced on Tuesday “multiple errors in the electoral records.”
The director of the EOM, Alejandra Barrios, mentioned, for example, failures when filling out voter registration forms with incorrect amounts, and “even cases of manipulation” that have been publicly recognized and are being corrected in the final count. of the Registry.
While waiting for the number of seats in the Senate that the Historical Pact will definitively receive to become official, the electoral authorities continue to scrutinize the votes for the House of Representatives under the watchful eye of the entire country, which hopes that there will not be a such a large gap in votes as the one in the Senate.
Likewise, the National Electoral Council (CNE) made official this Friday the results for the presidential consultations, which do not alter the results of each of the coalitions, in which Petro won the Historical Pact; Sergio Fajardo was elected by the Centro Esperanza Coalition, and Federico “Fico” Gutiérrez prevailed in that of the right-wing Team for Colombia.
(c) EFE Agency