Colombia: Leading Leftist Presidential Hopeful Warns of Fraud

Presidential hopeful Gustavo Petro, who is leading the polls, denounced the possibility of “a massive fraud” on the March 11 consultation to elect the presidential candidate for his left-wing coalition that he says could leave him out of the race.

In Colombia, political coalitions of several parties are formed and must present a sole presidential candidate who is chosen either through an internal selection process, or through a popular vote that is regulated as part of the country’s formal electoral process.

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In a press conference Monday, Petro said Colombia’s electoral law orders digitization, however “what is in this document is that there will be no digitization in the consultation that will determine by popular vote if I am a candidate or not” in the presidential elections of May 27.

Petro later explained in another tweet that “The law mandates the digitization of all electoral documents and the registry will not digitize E14 documents [voting tally sheets] of the consultation, breaking the law. Are they preparing fraud? The data will be given by phone from the voting table to the central registry without control.”

Carlos Caicedo, who is not even within the five top candidates, will run for the candidacy of the left-wing coalition against former mayor of Bogota Petro in Sunday's consultation that will coincide with Colombia’s legislative elections.

On March 11, Colombians will also choose a presidential candidate from right-wing hopefuls: Ivan Duque, who is backed by former President Alvaro Uribe, Alejandro Ordoñez and Marta Lucia Ramírez. The winner will be the sole candidate for the conservative political camp. The tally sheets from those results will also not be digitized.

The Colombia Coalition had planned to choose their candidate through popular vote, but Jorge Enrique Robledo of the Democratic Pole and Claudia Lopez of the Green Alliance gave up their candidacies to support Sergio Fajardo of the Citizen Commitment Movement, who is polling second in national surveys.

During the press conference Petro announced he had filed a provisional measure of protection at the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights to ensure the law is implemented so the tally sheets of 103,000 voting stations are digitized.

Petro also said he belongs to a political movement that has never had state power, referring to leftist politics in Colombia which has witnessed how “when there are strong candidates, they’ve been murdered.”

His comments refer to the murders of Bernardo Jaramillo of the Patriotic Union, who was killed at an airport in the early 1990s, and Carlos Pizarro of the M-19 insurgent group who was murdered by paramilitary groups.