The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, stated this Sunday (the 31st) that he does not recognize the so-called “transmitted count” of the presidential elections, as the data are not a public standard.
“As president, I do not accept the results of the pre-count from the private firm of the Bautista brothers, because, while the algorithms of the counting and tally software should be paused, in the last week 800,000 ballots from people who are not included in the official census presented were added,” he said on X.
According to Petro, there are two censuses at this moment, the official one and the Bautista brothers’ software census, which has 800 thousand additional people.
“Therefore, and according to the law, the binding results that the president will consider and accept are those of the counting commissions led by the judges of the Republic,” he emphasized.
The conservative opposition figure Abelardo de la Espriella and the progressive senator Iván Cepeda, a candidate supported by Petro, will compete for the presidency of Colombia in a second round after neither of them achieved the necessary majority of votes in Sunday’s elections.
De la Espriella obtained 43.72% of the votes, followed by Cepeda, the political godson of the country’s current president, Gustavo Petro, with 40.92%, according to 99% of the preliminary tally reported by the National Registry.
Both will face each other in a second round on June 21.
