“To resign would be the easiest way out”: Alexander Vega on his position at the Registrar

The registrar, Alexander Vega, has been in the midst of criticism since the elections held in Colombia last March. The irregularities that have been evident since then led citizens to ask for his immediate resignation. In an interview with Canal RCN news, however, he assured that it was not in his mind to depart from his position and that his goal was to answer the country for what happened. During the above-mentioned elections, more than 400 complaints were made regarding errors and alleged unlawful attitudes on the part of those responsible for the trial.

“I haven't thought about giving up because, first, it would be the easiest way out. Second, I have a responsibility to the country. At this time we have to answer all citizens through the presidential process,” Vega said in his talk with that media outlet.

As he pointed out, the body he heads acknowledges that there were failures, not only in the design of the forms but also in the counting of votes. “Looking at this moment, what would it have been if we had redesigned the E-14 form, maybe the digitization or pre-counting would have been much easier, but we would have a situation: we would also have studs in bad diligence,” he said.

Recently, the national registrar confirmed that the number of votes recovered exceeds the first 500,000 that had been lost, the latter belonging to the Historical Pact. With the update of the vote count, there is talk of the appearance of more than one million votes. According to what Vega explained, it was evident that 23,000 forms were poorly filled out by the voting juries, and it is estimated that in 5,109 tables there was 'a possible misconduct.

“We have already fully identified the jurors, but here we show the intention, not only in the bad diligence, but once they recorded the votes of the candidates, they crossed out the figures, so the witnesses pressured the jurors to put asterisks and crosses out on all the blank boxes. They were witnesses to all the campaigns,” Vega said in the interview in which he was accountable.

The registrar pointed out that there would be about 1′026,000 votes that cause the final result to vary, this means a difference of 7% between the pre-count and the counting, which should normally be a maximum of 2%.

As a result of this situation, the Attorney General's Office announced that it was officially launching an investigation against Vega. The registrar commented that he respected the decision and was willing and open to collaborate with whatever was needed. “We respect and abide by the various determinations of the disciplinary body. It will be the opportunity to demonstrate the proper action of the Electoral Organization and its officials at the head of the National Civil Status Registry in relation to the electoral contest of March 13, 2022,” a statement issued reads.

It was last Tuesday, April 5, when the Registrar's Office provided evidence proving the failures in the process before the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation and the Attorney General's Office. Those adversities, Vega says, are attributed “to the completion of a certain number of E-14 forms, labor and sole spring of voting juries.”

Sergio Alzate, lawyer and member director of the organization Colombia Transparente, in one of the most recent complaints, assured that at least 300,000 voting juries would have voted twice. “We started to investigate and recorded people who were actually working on the matter and explained the modus operandi that the registrar was proposing, among which is a profiling of the voting and profiling juries in the software that would be sent to the candidates,” he told W Radio.

Keep reading: