Colombian government and watchdogs prepare to hold electoral monitoring table

In view of the controversy that has arisen in the country, and which is questioning the transparency of the General Registry of Civil Status over the results of the legislative elections, the national government convened an electoral monitoring table. The space will take place on Tuesday, March 22 and it intends to discuss issues related to the counting process advanced during the last week.

It was indicated that officials from the ministerial cabinet of President Iván Duque, the Registry Office, members of the different political movements and supervisory bodies such as the Office of the Procurator, the Ombudsman's Office, the Prosecutor's Office and the Electoral Observation Mission (EOM) will participate in the table. The latter has already announced that it has a roadmap that it will recommend to accompany the electoral process, especially for the first and second presidential rounds.

According to the EOM, its proposal has two approaches: to legitimize the results of the legislative elections of March 13 and to work to restore the credibility of the Registry Office.

In addition to the EOM plan, other state entities are expected to hand over their plans to handle the situation. Likewise, public officials and citizens are expecting the national registrar, Alexander Vega, to explain what happened during these scrutinies.

It should be remembered that once the polls were closed on March 13 at 4:00pm, the pre-counting of votes began. Little by little, the Registrar's Office was reporting the votes that were being found at tables, but after a few days, political movements assured that “they were hiding votes from them.”

One of the first to launch the accusation was the Historical Pact, today represented by Gustavo Petro. Coalition volunteers found nearly 400,000 additional votes in favor of this movement than were initially reported.

In the recount held this third week of March, the Historical Pact, the Liberal Party and the New Liberalism were the only political alliances that recovered votes. The former had close to 390,152 additional votes, the latter 4,450 and the third, led in the list presented by Mabel Lara, reached 22,948 additional votes; however, they were not enough to pass the threshold necessary to reach the Senate of the Republic.

Seeing that the majority of votes recovered benefited the opposition, pro-government politicians claimed that the movement allegedly cheated in the legislative elections. This version even talks about an alleged union between Petro and Registrar Vega to change the election results.

Among those who made these statements are former presidents Andrés Pastrana and Álvaro Uribe. The latter has even assured that there would be a Venezuelan interception in the Colombian electoral process. As proof of this, the former president would have a document prepared, supposedly, by the 'General Directorate of Counterintelligence' of the neighboring country's Army which details a plan to intercede in national elections.

“Venezuelan penetration to contribute to electoral fraud in Colombia,” said the former president along with the two pages of a document that, so far, has not announced how it got into his hands.

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