Gustavo Petro asked the Registrar's Office to allow elections to be monitored by international organizations

Following the scandal over alleged electoral fraud in the legislative elections on 13 March, public opinion turned against the national registrar, Alexander Vega Rocha, to give explanations. In the last few hours, presidential candidate Gustavo Petro made a new request to the head of the National Civil Status Registry.

As requested by other political currents, as well as the electoral authorities, the candidate for the Historical Pact asked the official to allow international entities to review the computer systems that will be used in this year's presidential elections.

The request of the presidential candidate is the same as that made that week by the CNE, whose judges responsible for the inspection, control and monitoring of the elections requested that the count of the first and second electoral rounds be monitored by an international body.

The CNE sent the registrar a request to contract an overseas audit that would give Colombians peace of mind about the transparency of the hardware and software involved. That is to say that one hundred per cent confidence in the conduct of the Registrar's Office and its officials can be had in the following areas: The registration of ballot papers, the preparation of electoral kits, the selection of juries and witnesses, the transmission of data and processing of pre-counting; in addition, the counting process that will ultimately determine, who will be the new president of Colombia.

On April 12, the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation asked the CNE and the Registrar's Office to take measures to “shield the elections”, in this regard, it asked them to present a plan to achieve that objective. The route should be presented before the end of April.

The supervisory body upheld its request following hundreds of complaints received about irregularities presented at the polling stations, including alleged corruption of the suffragant, personal falsehood, disturbance to the democratic contest and fraudulent voting.

The Prosecutor's Office was notified of 131 reports of possible electoral crimes filed through the Immediate Reception Unit for Electoral Transparency (Uriel). It should be noted that this was notified in the national territory, since in the elections abroad, the Prosecutor's Office also learned about 62 complaints, which will be evaluated to establish whether there is merit to open a formal case.

In addition, more than 400 complaints were reported for irregularities in the pre-counting and completion of E-14 forms. For this reason, the Attorney General's Office even ordered an investigation of Registrar Alexander Vega and asked to inquire into all the movements of the entity.

Thus, it will be necessary to find out about the parameters for choosing the voting juries, the registration and registration of voters, as well as the relationship of the National Registry Office with one of the contractors.

The registrar, for his part, gave the country some peace of mind: “The important thing is that the form of assignment is going to be changed again and the experience as voting juries in past elections will be taken into account,” said the national registrar a few days ago.

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