President of Congress calls for ad hoc registrar for presidential elections

The president of the Colombian Congress and Senator of the Conservative Party, Juan Diego Gómez Jiménez, submitted the request to remove the official in charge of the Registrar General of the Nation, Alexander Vega, from office and to appoint an ad hoc registrar for the presidential elections on May 29.

The request was made during a political control debate against the registrar that took place this Tuesday in the legislature, which Vega did not attend. During his speech, Gómez asked the supervisory authorities to review his actions: according to the conservative senator, the irregularities committed by the official would have started a year and a half ago.

The first irregularity, as stated by Gómez, would have occurred when an electronic platform was made available for the registration of ballot papers in the polling places for the legislative elections of 13 March.

He said that approximately 850 thousand people filed complaints about votes fulfilled or searched elsewhere without their consent.

In addition, Gómez questioned the design of the algorithm with which the voting juries were chosen for those elections, which also decided the candidates for the presidential elections by three different coalitions. He reproached the fact that teachers had been excluded from the lottery and that the elected juries were not trained well.

He also stressed that the system for recognizing electoral witnesses did not work as appropriate and no one has clarified to them whether it was a failure or a cyber attack.

On the other hand, Gómez echoed the statements made by the former president of Colombia and natural leader of his party, Andrés Pastrana Arango, about an alleged interference by the company Indra with the electoral results of the legislatures. He suspiciously mentioned that 25% of the results during the polls had changed to favor the Historical Pact, which rose from 16 to 20 seats.

With these arguments, the president of Congress called for Vega to be removed from office, that an ad hoc registrar be assigned and that the presidents of the Constitutional Court, the Council of State and the Supreme Court of Justice “review the adequacy and planning of the electoral body.”

He also called on the Comptroller's Office, the Attorney General's Office and the Attorney General's Office to “help us review each of the procedures in the proceedings of what was that Colombian electoral process.”

The Council of State summoned Registrar Alexander Vega to a public hearing on Wednesday, April 6, to discuss the demands against his election to office for the period 2019-2023 for alleged irregularities.

The lawsuits, which had been on file with the high court since 16 January 2020, were filed by the Front for Social Anti-Corruption Response, which called into question the selection process carried out by the presidents of the high courts in 2019 to give Vega the position of national registrar.

KEEP READING: