The outgoing president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, published a rant on social media on Sunday night in which he declared that he would not respect the results of the first round of the presidential election which showed his protege Iván Cepeda in second place.
Petro claimed that the results were not trustworthy because the election was administered by a private company, Thomas Greg & Sons, and that the company had added 800,000 ghost voters to the rolls. Petro did not offer any evidence for his outrageous claim. Thomas Greg & Sons is a security technology company that has operated in Colombia — helping print passports and election ballots, among other services — for over 60 years.
Colombians went to the polls on Sunday for a first round of voting. In the country, as with many in South America, the first round features all registered candidates. To win, a candidate must attract over 50 percent of the vote, which rarely happens. Instead, the top two vote-getters move on to a runoff election in which the candidate with the most votes becomes president.
As of Monday morning, conservative businessman Abelardo de la Espriella won the election with about 44 percent of the vote, less than a million votes above radical leftist senator Iván Cepeda, who obtained about 41 percent of the vote. The establishment conservative candidate, Senator Paloma Valencia, came in third place with about seven percent of the vote and immediately endorsed de la Espriella.
While Cepeda remains in the race, Petro nonetheless complained that he did not believe the election results were legitimate, claiming that the election added nearly one million fake voters.
“The so-called transmitted count has no binding force. Its data are not public norm,” he said in a message published on the social media site Twitter. “As president, I do not accept the results of the first count from the Bautista brothers’ private firm [Thomas Greg & Sons] because, when the software algorithms for counting and analysis should have stayed still, in the last week they were varied three times and added 800,000 more profiles of people who are not in the official census as presented.”
“At this moment, there are two censuses, the official one and the one in the software of the Bautista brothers that has 800,000 more people,” Petro continued. “Hundreds of thousands of votes were added without the existence of voters. Therefore, and in accordance with the law, the results that the president will heed and accept are those of the scrutiny commissions led by judges of the Republic.”
Petro also published a video allegedly showing a woman he claimed had been denied the right to vote because of “ballot forms duplicated in corruption rings in the registrar.”
The unsubstantiated claim follows years of Petro railing against the Colombian electoral system, including complaining of alleged rigging during the 2022 presidential election, which he won. At the time, Petro claimed that then-voter registrar Alexander Vega was “lying” that the election was secure.
“He says that we have guarantees and that is not true. He told me that they allow technical audits, but that is looking at 20 million lines of algorithms and one line could result in 100 more or fewer votes. That happened already,” Petro objected.
Following Petro’s election win, he did not denounce the election or renounce the presidency in light of alleged rigging.
Petro’s latest complaints about alleged election fraud prompted widespread condemnation from Colombia’s conservatives, who accused him of attempting to maintain a stranglehold on power. The Colombian Constitution does not allow presidents to serve for more than one term, so Petro is not on the ballot, but Cepeda of Petro’s Pacto Historico party coalition is widely considered a protege and continuation of the Petro candidacy.
“Petro and his puppet, I have been warning about this since before the campaign, intend to steal democracy,” de la Espriella declared on election night, encouraging the Colombian military to reject any attempt to seize power by the left.
De la Espriella also urged the international community to observe the election and prevent any leftist attempts to steal it.
“To the international community: before the eyes of the world, [Nicolás] Maduro stole the elections, it already happened once before,” he stated, referring to former Venezuelan dictator Maduro. “Put your eyes on Colombia and do not allow Petro and Cepeda to do the same.”
Other prominent conservatives also condemned Petro, backing de la Espriella’s condemnation of his fraud claims.
“What a danger, this man!” conservative Senator-elect Andrés Forero said in a statement on Sunday, referring to Petro. “It was not enough for him to illegally campaign for his candidate and now, in an anti-democratic and authoritarian way, refuses to accept the election results because they do not benefit him. Cepeda must be defeated to save democracy and freedom in Colombia!”
Medellín Mayor Federico Gutiérrez, who also ran in the 2022 presidential race that Petro won, accused Petro of having the “airs of a dictator” and asked, “Who are you to accept the results? That is what the registrar is for!”
“The president of the republic cannot reject the electoral system,” Valencia, de la Espriella’s presidential rival on the right, said on Monday, “just because of personal enmities against a corporation. It is an affront to democracy and a worrying route towards failing to recognize his defeat in the runoff.”
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