Colombia.- Colombian presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, from the far-right movement Defensores de la Patria, denounced this Sunday, at the closing of his campaign for the runoff election, that illegal armed groups are threatening his voters in the departments of Cauca and Nariño, in the Pacific region.
“What is happening in Nariño and Cauca constitutes a serious threat to democracy and electoral freedom. In more than 46 of the 64 municipalities of Nariño and in more than 36 of the 42 municipalities of Cauca, there is strong armed pressure from illegal groups on the population“, stated De la Espriella in Buga, in the department of Valle del Cauca, where he closed his campaign for the June 21 elections.
The candidate pointed out that the threats coincide in places where there were “atypical electoral results,” in which “the heir of the misgovernment and the FARC (the leftist candidate Iván Cepeda) retains nearly 70% of the population, even reaching records close to 95%” in the first-round vote, held last May 31st.
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In that sense, De la Espriella pointed out that in Cauca and Nariño “armed groups are demanding that citizens photograph their ballot marked (with the vote) for the heir of the FARC and the regime, Cepeda, to use that image as a safe-conduct pass at illegal checkpoints.”
The far-right candidate leads Cepeda by nearly four percentage points in voting intention for the presidential runoff election, according to the latest poll published this Sunday.
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De la Espriella has 48.6% and Cepeda, from the Historic Pact, the party of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, reaches 44.7%, while the blank vote is the option for 6.7% of the electorate, indicated the poll by the National Consulting Center published by Cambio magazine.
Two other polls, by Guarumo and Ecoanalítica for the newspaper El Tiempo, and by AtlasIntel for the magazine Semana, yesterday gave the far-right candidate a lead of 7.6 and 7.8 percentage points, respectively, over Cepeda.
