Elections in Colombia: Cepeda and Petro dismiss preliminary 1st round results – Colombia News

Colombia’s leftist presidential candidate, Senator Ivan Cepeda, said Sunday that he does not accept the preliminary results of the first round election that surprisingly saw far-right attorney Abelardo de la Espriella come out on top.

In a speech before supporters, Cepeda called on electoral authorities to scrutinize the allegedly last-minute registry of hundreds of thousands of voters to the voter registry of the National Registry, which organizes the elections.

There is a discrepancy that we want to verify regarding the electoral census. And that is not just any discrepancy. we are talking about 885,000 people or ID cards. We want — because we are serious people — is that to be clarified.

Senator Ivan Cepeda

The leftist candidate, who was considered the frontrunner in the polls, said that his political party was verifying the results in response to “atypical voting” reported by an “indeterminate number of polling stations.”

“Only when the scrutiny commissions leave this matter completely clarified, clearly and rigorously clarified, will we make a statement on tonight’s results,” said Cepeda.

We are not inventing any kind of excuses to not recognize results. We are asking, in a democracy, for the scrutiny commissions to do their job so that we know with clarity what was even the very last of the votes we obtained in the national electoral territory today.

Senator Ivan Cepeda

The leftist leader additionally claimed that hundreds of thousands of people were denied the right to vote because polling stations were moved to different locations and deplored undue intervention by foreign government, particularly that of Ecuador.

According to the preliminary count, Cepeda received 41% of the votes against 44% of De la Espriella, who had been trailing the leftist candidate in virtually all the polls.

President Gustavo Petro also refused to accept the results after months of clashing with the National Registry over the outsourcing of the election logistics to a company that is owned by convicted fraudsters.