Elections Colombia 2022: Iván Duque votes and asks Colombians to go to the polls “without hate”

the president of Colombia, Ivan Dukeexercised his right to vote this Sunday, thus inaugurating the day of election of the successor in office, after which he invited citizens to go to the polls “with enthusiasm and joy” and “without hatred”.

Duque voted at eight in the morning at polling station number 1, installed in the National Capitol, located on the south side of the Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá, where he said he hopes the day will pass in “peace and tranquility.”

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More than 39 million Colombians are called this Sunday to the polls to elect Duque’s successorelections that come after a hostile and polarized electoral campaign that has been marked by accusations of fraud, complaints of threats and attempts on the lives of some candidates.

The president was accompanied by his wife, Maria Juliana Ruiz; the Minister of the Interior, Daniel Palacios; the national registrar, Alexander Vega; the mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López, and the president of the Senate, Juan Diego Gómez, among other officials.

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after voting, Duque celebrated the participation in “a new democratic day” which serves to understand that it is “an institutional strengthening of our country”, for which he invited Colombians to “vote with enthusiasm, with joy, without hatred, without prejudice and without bias”.

“We have one of the oldest democracies in this hemisphere, one of the most solid democracies and it becomes solid because every four years we make an orderly transition, where in peace and institutional tranquility power is ceded to the destiny marked by the citizens in the polls”, the president added.

For these elections, the favorite in all voting intention polls is the leftist Gustavo Petroof the Historical Pact, whose main rivals are the right-wing Federico “Fico” Gutiérrez, from Team for Colombia Fico, and the independent populist Rodolfo Hernández, from the Anti-Corruption Leaders League.

“We want this day to pass in peace, in tranquility, with the joy of voting and citizen expression”something for which the Colombian public force will work, to “guarantee the right to vote”, and demonstrate to the world the “unquestionable strength of the institutions”, added the president.

For its part, the national registrar, whose work has been strongly criticized for the failures that occurred in the pre-count of the legislative elections on March 13, said that this Sunday’s session began normally.

Vega told Duque that even “remote areas that did not vote 20 years ago have polling stations” this time and stressed that the Registrar’s Office gives “full guarantees for campaigns and for citizens.”

Source: Elcomercio

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