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Three electoral nightmares in Colombia

2022-05-28T15:49:27.795Z


Citizens go out to vote with various fears: a mismanagement of the electoral institutions and a narrow result for the three favorites


A man votes in the legislative elections in Colombia, on March 13. LUIS ROBAYO (AFP)

Colombia will wake up this Sunday to vote in one of the most tense elections the country has had in recent decades.

There is enormous distrust in the electoral system and the polls promised a competition so close that endless legal fights or social protests could be in the offing.

For a nightmare to be born, a fear must first be cultivated.

After there was legitimate concern in the legislative elections in March about a discrepancy in votes between the pre-count by the Registrar's Office and the official scrutiny by the National Electoral Council, politicians from the right and the left took advantage of the occasion to speak of electoral fraud (without evidence) or even a coup (also without evidence).

Former president Andrés Patrana, of the conservative party, dared to repeat that the Spanish company that designed the electoral software plays in favor of Gustavo Petro (again, without evidence).

But the lack of transparency of the electoral bodies in the face of the vote gap, which was blamed on human error at the polling stations, created the perfect storm for a crisis.

According to a 40db survey for EL PAÍS,

“The worst scenario is that something fails in the Registry.

Nothing can go wrong.

Nothing,” the director of the Electoral Observation Mission told El PAÍS this week.

“And the second worst scenario is with narrow results, with differences of two points.

There already depends a lot on the confidence of the candidates to grant victory”.

First Nightmare

: Petro wins by a hair.

The candidate Gustavo Petro has campaigned in recent months to win in the first round because, he is clear, in the first round it benefits him that the right-wing vote is divided (between Rodolfo Hernández and Federico Gutiérrez).

But it would be much harder for him to fight his opponents in the June runoff with his opponents united.

If he does manage to win in the first with 50%+1 of the votes (he only has a 5% chance according to the data analysis carried out by El PAÍS), the nightmare is that he does so by such a small margin that the right does not concede its victory but rather raise the specter of fraud.

Second nightmare

: draw between Hernández and Gutiérrez.

More likely, there will be a very close result between the two right-wing candidates vying for the second-largest vote: Rodolfo Hernández, of the Anti-Corruption Governors League movement, and Federico Gutiérrez, of the Equipo Por Colombia coalition.

Although the polls showed on average a difference of about 7 percentage points between the two, giving Gutiérrez the advantage, the latest polls revealed that Hernández was rising by leaps and bounds: the latest National Consulting Center poll, 10 days before the elections , revealed only a percentage difference of 1.7 in voting intention;

the last CELAG survey spoke of a tie with only 0.3 points difference (20.4 for Hernández, 20.1 for Gutiérrez).

It would be a technical tie, if you count the margin of error.

This would give the National Electoral Council very little time to define the winner between the two, since two weeks after the first round the second round begins for Colombians living abroad (and in three weeks for those living in Colombia).

It also implies waiting for the loser to concede defeat, and being able to print the face of the person who will go to the second round on the cards in time.

Third nightmare

: tie between Petro and the right-wing candidate in the second round.

Although Petro is assured of being the most voted in the first round, even if he does not have 50% + 1 of the votes yet, he is not guaranteed to win in the second round.

In the same poll by the National Consulting Center, Petro would be in a technical tie if he goes with Hernández to the second: 40.5% of the votes for each one.

It is the perfect scenario for either side to shake the specter of fraud and ask, as happened in March, for a recount (impossible at the national level).

Gutiérrez, on the other hand, appeared 10 percentage points below Petro in a possible second round, although that scenario could change with the alliances that the two achieve if they go on to compete on June 19.

Colombians may wake up on Monday morning coming out of a nightmare if all the candidates accept the results, if the Registrar's Office does an impeccable job and the defeated do not lose by less than one percentage point.

Or they can wake up straight to the nightmare if the opposite happens.

The worst storm in that nightmare has another name, violence.

“The greatest fear is that public order issues may arise and I am not referring to one or another candidate winning,” Alejandra Barrios, from the MOE, told El PAÍS.

“It doesn't matter from which side, because the anger that exists does not correspond to a single political current.

People can take to the streets to express frustration against the system, not necessarily in support of their candidate.”

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-05-28

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