Colombia: de la Espriella’s victory contested – the left calls for a recount
The right-wing candidate wins by a narrow margin, but the progressive coalition alleges irregularities and challenges the results in thousands of constituencies amid a climate of high tension.
Abelardo de la Espriella, the pro-Trump candidate, won by a handful of votes in the run-off of the presidential elections in Colombia, according to preliminary, unofficial figures. “We have defeated coercive voting, vote-buying, the traditional parties, corruption, the usual suspects and the guerrillas. Colombia has won,” wrote ‘El Tigre’ on social media in the immediate aftermath.
However, his opponent, the leader of the progressive coalition, Ivan Cepeda, has not accepted the result. Backed by the outgoing president, Gustavo Petro, he has called for a recount. Citing possible electoral fraud, he has urged people to wait for the official result before declaring the next president. ‘We acknowledge the result of the preliminary count, but it is neither official nor binding: our observers and lawyers,’ he commented, ‘are in the process of challenging 33,000 polling stations across the country. Once the final result has been announced and the relevant checks have been carried out, we will recognise the result that emerges from that process.”
In short, in such a heated climate, it will therefore be up to the judges to put an end to this long and gruelling electoral and political battle. At the heart of the dispute, which is further dividing a country already deeply polarised, lies the preliminary vote count known as the ‘Preconteo’: this system involves the collection and processing of data provided by polling stations via telephone by the Registraduria, the public body responsible for managing elections.
A method considered highly reliable: in the past, the results of the preliminary count have always been largely confirmed by the final official count. On the eve of the election, observers estimated the possible margin of error at just one percentage point. It is a pity that this time the gap between the two stands at 0.95 per cent: Abelardo de la Espriella secured 49.65 per cent, whilst his opponent secured 48.70 per cent. There is also a precedent: in the general election on 13 March 2022, the preliminary count had attributed 2,302,847 votes in the Senate to the Pacto Histórico, the left-wing coalition; whilst the official count subsequently raised this figure to 2,830,902 votes – a difference of 528,105 votes, exactly double the margin of approximately 250,000 votes recorded today, the narrowest margin in Colombia’s history.
