7 keys about the presidential elections in Colombia this Sunday, May 29

In the elections on May 29 in Colombia, six candidates, all men, compete to succeed the current president, Iván Duque, in the period 2022-2026. The following are some key aspects of the presidential election:

1. VOTE

A total of 39,002,239 Colombians (20,111,908 women and 18,890,331 men) are eligible to vote in the 12,263 posts installed throughout the country by the Registry, of which 5,174 will be in urban areas and 7,089 in rural areas.

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There are also 1,343 tables distributed in 250 polling stations in 67 countries for the 972,764 Colombians registered abroad to vote. Voting abroad began this Monday and ends on Sunday 29 at embassies and consulates.

The law establishes that to be elected president it is necessary to obtain half plus one of the total votes. and, in the event that none of the candidates succeeds, three weeks later, on June 19, a second round will be held in which the two most voted in the first will participate.

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The Colombian pre-count system is usually very fast, so the first results are expected a few hours after the polls close, They open at 8 in the morning and close at 4 in the afternoon.

2. URIBE, THE ONLY WINNER IN THE FIRST ROUND

The two electoral rounds were introduced in the 1991 Constitution and the first elections with this system were held in 1994, coincidentally on May 29, like this year, with a second round also on June 19, in which the liberal Ernesto Samper won. with 50.57%.

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The only president who has been elected in the first round, and on the two occasions in which he ran, was Álvaro Uribe, that in 2002 he prevailed with 54.35%, and in 2006 he increased his flow and was re-elected with 62.51%.

3. SIX CANDIDATES

A total of six candidates aspire this year to the Presidency and their location on the electoral card was decided by lottery. The applicants are:

Rodolfo Hernandez (League of Anti-Corruption Rulers, populist), John Milton Rodriguez (Colombia Justa Libres, right), Federico Gutierrez (Team for Colombia Fico, right), Sergio Fajardo (Hope Center, center), Enrique Gomez Martinez (National Salvation, right) and Gustavo Petro (Historic Covenant, left).

However, the ballots show eight candidates because they were already printed when the former governor of Antioquia Luis Pérez Gutiérrez, of Colombia Piensa en Grande, announced his withdrawal, a path that was also taken at the last minute by Íngrid Betancourt, of the Oxygen Green Party, who gave her support to Hernandez.

4. APPLICANTS FOR THE VICE PRESIDENCY

In the range of running mates for the Vice Presidency there are three women and three men on this occasion, of whom the majority, four, are Afro-descendants.

The most notorious announcement was that of the running mate of Petrothe African environmental activist and lawyer France Marquez. Gutiérrez chose a centrist politician, doctor Rodrigo Lara Sánchez, who is the son of Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, murdered by the drug mafia in 1984 when he was Minister of Justice. For his part, Fajardo also opted for Afro representation, with former Environment Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo.

The others are: Marelén Castillo, with Rodolfo Hernández; Sandra de las Lajas Torres, with John Milton Rodríguez, and Carlos Cuartas, with Enrique Gómez.

5. THE FAVORITES IN THE POLLS

All the polls coincide in showing the leftist Gustavo Petro as the favorite to win the elections, although he would not achieve it in the first round. Petro would obtain, depending on the polling firm, between 38.8% and 46.5% of the voting intention.

The unknown is with whom the second round will be played, if with the rightist “Fico” Gutierrezformer mayor of Medellín, or with the “engineer” Hernandezthe only one that has managed to rise consistently in recent weeks.

The latest polls give “Fico” between 20.6% and 31.5% of the intention to vote, while Hernández, a populist businessman, would collect between 12.7 and 21.2%.

One of the losers, according to the polls, would be the center represented by Fajardo, who in 2018 was less than 300,000 votes short of taking the position in the second round from Petro, but this year it may not even reach 5% of the votes. .

6. WHITE VOTE AND ABSTENTION

The presidential ballot includes a blank ballot box, which has been increasing in recent elections, and which, in the event that it constitutes the majority of the valid votes in a first round, according to the Constitution, “must be repeated for a voting only once” and “the same candidates may not present themselves”.

A fundamental player in the elections will be abstention. In 2018 almost half of the population, 47% of Colombians, decided not to go out and vote, while in the peace plebiscite, abstention was 62% and was one of the keys to the victory of the “no” to the agreement with the FARC.

This year, the first presidential round is held on May 29, the eve of a national holiday, which may influence this factor.

7. OBSERVERS

As happened in the legislative elections on March 13, For the first time in a presidential election, the European Union will send an observation mission with a hundred people.

The Organization of American States (OAS) will also deploy 87 observers throughout the country and the NGO Electoral Observation Mission (MOE) will also have its supervision mission.

One of the points will be the correct development of the count, after tens of thousands of votes of the leftist Historical Pact, led by Petro, were incorrectly counted in the pre-count of the legislative elections, which were corrected by the official scrutiny.

Source: Elcomercio

Deshawn