Gender parity and other measures that fell with the Constitutional Court's decision on the electoral code

This Thursday, April 21, it became known that the Constitutional Court overturned the reform of the Electoral Code proposed by the Registrar General, Alexander Vega, and which had been approved by Congress at the end of 2020. The new rules of the game were written for voting in Colombia, and one of them was gender parity.

With a vote of six votes in favor and three against, the Full Chamber of the high court concluded that procedural defects had occurred in the adoption of this new code that established new rules for the electoral process in the country.

According to the official statement, “the Constitutional Court, with a presentation by Judge Alejandro Linares, declared the unconstitutionality, due to procedural defects in its processing in Congress, of the statutory bill number 234 of 2020 Senate, 409 of 2020 Chamber, 'by which the Colombian Electoral Code is issued and others are issued provisions '″.

In December 2020, the Senate of the Republic had approved gender parity in the reform of the Electoral Code, the formation of 50% of women on the lists to departmental assemblies and municipal councils.

This year's Congress approved in the electoral code, "the aforementioned mandatory parity when it comes to compiling the lists of applicants to collegiate bodies. However, what was approved is a light version of what was once tried to be introduced through political reform, which included not only parity but also that lists were closed and 'zipped' (men, women, men, women...), to effectively ensure gender equality in political competition ”, he said.

In this approval of the joint electoral lists, it would be modified for the participation of women at decision-making levels in the different branches and bodies of public power in Colombia, which established a minimum of 30% with Law 581 of 2000 and Law 1475 of 2011 in the lists of candidates.

At the time, the vice-president and chancellor, Marta Lucía Ramírez, called this approval a milestone in political empowerment and in closing gender gaps in the country. “This is a triumph for the Colombian women. We are defeating - with the union of forces from all over the State - the glimpses of machismo, discrimination and exclusion that still persist in Colombia, in all social settings.”

· The reform of the Code created more than a thousand new posts, among municipal registrars, delegates and special registrars in the 32 departments. As well as the considerations that the actions of the Registrar's Office in relation to civil registration, identification, electoral processes and citizen participation mechanisms were of national security and defense.

This was questioned by congressmen when they pointed out that the Registrar's Office does not have defense functions and they warned that this would jeopardize the right to information, while the Registry said that such data were valuable for “Colombian institutions.”

· It set new rules on pre-counting and scrutiny, control of polls. It stated that, in order to be published, a survey had to go through a prior control of the National Electoral Council, and not later, as it does now.

· Sanctioned who could continue to be candidates. With the reform, the National Electoral Council could no longer refuse the registration of candidates who in the past had been sanctioned by decisions of the Office of the Attorney General or the Comptroller's Office.

· It contemplated a door for electronic voting, the monopoly of biometrics. The reform opened the doors for Registrar Vega to have full control, and to technological assistance services for the elections.

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