Gustavo Petro says that his successor was elected with a system that did not guarantee the security of votes

Bogotá.- The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, asserted this Monday that his successor, Abelardo de la Espriella, who will take office next Friday, was elected using an electoral system that allegedly did not guarantee the security of the votes.

“I was elected (in 2022) under an electoral system that guaranteed the security lock placed so that the documents uploaded cannot be modified, because by removing that after my elections (the ones he won), everything changes completely, because those PDFs become modifiable,” Petro expressed in a statement to the press.

The outgoing president, who does not recognize De la Espriella’s victory but will leave power on Friday, accused the National Civil Registry (electoral authority) of removing the ‘hash lock,’ the cryptographic code that guarantees the integrity of the E-14 forms, the scrutiny record of the poll workers.

The Registrar’s response

The National Registry, for its part, stated after the June 22 elections that “the ‘hash lock’ of the E-14 form consultation platform was not removed” and stated that the measures implemented for the elections had “the sole purpose of guaranteeing the security, integrity, and availability of electoral information for all Colombian citizens.”

Petro, however, insisted today that, according to an independent audit he voiced at a press conference, “there was algorithmic, systematic electoral fraud and, above all, a huge volume of votes in favor of Abelardo,” who defeated Senator Iván Cepeda in the second round of the elections, who was the candidate of the president and his party, the Historic Pact.

“The changes come after my election to the Presidency of the Republic and cover the results of the local elections (…) and obviously the two presidential rounds, where the conception of electoral transparency was completely changed and, as a lawyer said, the collapse of almost half the Constitution occurred,” insisted Petro.

“Illegitimate president”

Petro insisted that on Friday, the “inauguration of an illegitimate president will take place in Cali, the main city in southwestern Colombia, because the one who won was Iván Cepeda.”

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The president also pointed out that there is a major political problem because the electoral fraud was allegedly orchestrated with “foreign money,” as he has denounced several times, without providing evidence.

Abelardo de la Espriella was declared the winner of the presidential runoff by a margin of 251,854 votes over Cepeda, according to the final count by the National Electoral Council (CNE).

The results were endorsed by electoral authorities and international observation missions, which did not report systematic irregularities that would compromise the outcome of the election.

Despite what he denounces, the outgoing president stated that what he has “asked for is peace, much wisdom, but firmness, because that implies that the Constitution must prevail” in the face of the challenge posed by the alleged electoral fraud.

Petro, who has been frantically active on X four days before leaving office, has stated that social mobilization must become the main mechanism of opposition to the new Government and has encouraged unions, peasant, indigenous, and grassroots organizations to defend the social reforms approved by Congress during his term in the streets peacefully.