US Senator calls on Colombia’s election authority to disqualify votes from violent regions – Colombia News

US Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) called on Colombia’s electoral authority to disqualify votes from “parts of the country that are not secure” ahead of presidential elections.

In a conversation with the Atlantic Council think tank, Moreno said that “I want to encourage the government, the CNE specifically, to consider voter intimidation as a disqualifying event for some of the ballot results in some parts of the country that are not secure.”

“We’ll have that conversation with them,” said the senator, who was born in Colombia and will be in the South American country during the May 31 first round of elections as an observer.

Moreno added that the US Government may not recognize the results if observers find that some results “are clearly part of an intimidation campaign.”

Look, if you’re going to count votes that were the result of clear intimidation, you’re not going to have an election which the international community or certainly the United States of America considers to be a free and fair election.

US Senator Bernie Moreno

President Gustavo Petro took offense to Moreno’s latest attempt to meddle in Colombian affairs and stressed that “the free will of the Colombian people must be respected. This is a democracy, not a serfdom.”

Moreno’s family has long had ties to Colombia’s conservative and far-right elites, and found itself linked to major corruption scandals when one of the clan’s allies, Andres Pastrana, was president.

Petro has additionally accused the senator’s older brother of being involved in money laundering activities of paramilitaries linked to the now-defunct Bogota Cartel.