A week after the legislative elections and the primaries of three coalitions in Colombia, the first presidential voting intention poll was released in which the leftist Gustavo Petro is nine points ahead of right-winger Federico “Fico” Gutiérrez. The survey was carried out by the National Consulting Center and published this Sunday by the magazine Week. While Colombians await the presidential elections on May 29, the scrutiny that is done after the legislative elections added nearly 400 thousand votes to the Historical Pactwhich would give him three more seats to reach a total of 19 in the Senate.
Petropresidential candidate of the leftist Historical Pact, has a 32 percent vote intention for the May elections in Colombia, according to the poll published this Sunday in which the right-wing “Fico” Gutiérrez reaches 23 percent. It should be noted that the progressive leader added five points more than in the last survey of the National Consulting Center in February, while the right-wing candidate rose 19 points.
Behind Petro and Gutiérrez appear the populist Rodolfo Hernandezformer mayor of Bucaramanga, with the ten percent of intention to vote, the same percentage as the candidate of the Centro Esperanza Coalition, Sergio Fajardo. The list is completed by the candidates of the Oxygen Green party, Ingrid Betancourt with the three per centand the former governor of Antioquia Luis Pérez, who gathers less than 0.5 percent of voting intentions.
The Colombian left adds almost 400 thousand votes
A problem that Colombia did not have arose with the legislative elections of March 13: doubts about the transparency of its electoral system after the fiasco in which the counting of votes in the Senate and Chamber became, just 70 days before crucial elections presidential. The first protest came from the Historical Pact by denouncing as “fraud” that in some 29 thousand tables not a single vote appeareda clearly impossible situation not only because they are equivalent to 25 percent of the total but because that force was the most voted last Sunday.
Indeed, the vote count of 97 percent published on Friday by the National Registry gave him 390,152 more votes of what was reported in the preliminary sum to the leftist coalition led by Gustavo Petro. Historical Pact, which was the one that received the most support in both chambers, would receive three additional seats to the 16 initially received, with which it would become the first minority of the body of 108 members, according to the forecasts that must be made official by the Registry.
The National Registrar, Alexander Vegaassured that it is the “official result of the Senate”, which does not represent the total count, since the results are from “about 97 percent” of the tables, so the remaining three percent would be missing. “We are waiting and continue to correct the errors by the juries”added Vega, who insisted that one could not speak of fraud.
The new results presented do not alter the order that had already been given in the pre-countbut it does add votes to three formations (the Historical Pact, the Liberal Party and the New Liberalism, which still does not pass the threshold of three percent to obtain parliamentary representation) and subtracts the rest of the parties.
Precisely one of those who lost a seat in the recount, the ruling Democratic Center, asked this Saturday “a recount of all the votes” of the parliamentarians. Although the vote count is not over yet, the party questioned the “unusual” difference between the pre-count of votes on Sunday and the partial results that were released gradually during the week.
Colombian democracywith its imperfections, I haven’t experienced a situation like this for more than 50 years, when a government maneuver in the 1970 presidential elections gave victory to conservative Misael Pastrana ahead of retired general Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, who had led the vote count. Years later, the alleged fraud in those elections gave rise to the guerrilla Movement April 19 (M-19), which took its name from the date on which said elections were held and in which Petro was a member.