Historical Pact would be deciding vice-presidential formula in next Tuesday's meeting

Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez agreed not to refer publicly to the issue until the meeting takes place

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Colombia's presidential candidate Gustavo Petro speaks after winning the referendum vote for the Historic Pact coalition, in Bogota, Colombia March 13, 2022. REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez
Colombia's presidential candidate Gustavo Petro speaks after winning the referendum vote for the Historic Pact coalition, in Bogota, Colombia March 13, 2022. REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez

One of the questions that revolve around the Historical Pact is the name of who will accompany as vice-presidential formula the winner of his interparty consultation, presidential candidate Gustavo Petro.

Based on this doubt, several rumors have arisen that their protagonists have had to deny, but the most familiar name is that of Francia Márquez, who took second place in the consultation and proved to have more electoral capital on her own than many candidates from other interparty consultations, including Sergio Fajardo, the winner in the Center Hope Coalition.

Although the candidates of the left-wing coalition were supposed to have agreed to choose second place as the vice-presidential formula, Petro made the controversial decision to undo the promise — perhaps, with the confidence that the polls always gave him that he was the absolute winner of the consultation.

When the expected result came — the triumph of the leader of Human Colombia — the race against time began to define his formula. Among the actions that take place to name the vice president, Petro and Márquez were summoned to a meeting at noon this Thursday, March 17. Senators Gustavo Bolivar and Alexander López also attended the meeting as guarantors.

After three and a half hours of meeting, Senator Bolivar posted this message on his Twitter account:

So, for this March 22 at noon, Senator elect Martha Peralta Epiayú, president of the MAIS party, Senator López, president of the Polo Democrático party, Senator Aida Avella, president of the Patriotic Union, plus the leaders of the Broad Democratic Alliance and Human Colombia are summoned. All of them seek to make a collective decision on the vice-presidential formula.

It should be recalled that the three presidential candidates who entered the race for winning an interparty consultation will have five working days from Friday the 18th — when their victory is ratified with scrutiny in hand — to choose and register their vice-presidential formula.

That includes Petro, winner of the Historical Pact, Federico Gutiérrez, winner of the Team for Colombia, and Sergio Fajardo, winner of the Centro Esperanza Coalition, who has already announced the former minister Luis Gilberto Murillo as his vice-presidential formula.

Gustavo Petro has the largest budget reported for the election campaign and is the one that has invested the most, so far, in the race for the Presidency of the Republic. Therefore, the National Electoral Council (CNE) would have initiated a verification of the accounts of the Historical Pact to establish whether it meets the established ceilings.

According to RCN News, CNE magistrate Pedro Felipe Robledo ordered the collection of evidence and documents from Petro's campaign accounts for alleged violation of electoral ceilings in the investment of resources.

Among all the candidates for the presidential consultations, the most costly campaign was that of Petro. The leader and elected candidate of the Historical Pact reported expenditures of 4,056,117,737, of which nearly 3.7 billion were spent on transportation and electoral propaganda and 213 million on public events.

According to his accountant, the senator applied for a loan from Confiar Cooperativa Financiera for $6,972,000,000, which is the only campaign income he has reported so far.

However, the candidate has until April 13 to complete the campaign income and expenditure report and only until that date could an investigation be initiated if inconsistencies are found in the reported data.

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