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El Ciudadano

Original article: Y en Colombia ¿dónde están las actas?

By Matías Bosch Carcuro

From Milei and Rodrigo Paz to Noboa and Laura Fernández, and from Luis Abinader to Bukele, with Asfura, Murillo, Peña in Paraguay, along with the ever-present Kast and Trump, the «Shield of the Americas» and Netanyahu leaped into action to quickly congratulate Abelardo de la Espriella on his supposed «victory» in the Colombian runoff election.

The question arises naturally: where are the ballots? These are the same ballots that sparked a global outcry from Venezuela in 2024, elevating Edmundo González as a democratic hero in exile in Spain and leading to María Corina Machado being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Who, then, is claiming these ballots in Barranquilla, the stronghold of Mr. Abelardo?

The reasons are more than ample: Iván Cepeda’s candidacy has challenged 57,000 voting tables, the margin is barely 0.9%, and videos are proliferating on social networks showing irregularities, tampering with results, and, in many cases, outright and clumsy mistakes in the election records.

The history of fraud and interventions in the region provides another compelling reason, impacting significantly in the last year in Ecuador, Argentina, Honduras, and potentially in Peru.

Thus, when speaking on election night, Cepeda stated he was aware of the “pre-count” numbers, which is all that is known so far, but he reiterated that only the result of the official counting process should be accepted and recognized.

This was particularly pertinent as he had already announced the challenge of 30,000 voting tables by that time. However, those at the «Shield» and regarding “the ballots” seem to dismiss such trivialities: “narrative and strike trump data” could well be their motto.

The situation is serious in Colombia. One only needs to consider that before Sunday the 21st, prevailing analyses suggested that Cepeda would need to accumulate 3 million votes in the runoff to win; that single figure suggested that doing so was mathematically impossible. The defeat appeared predetermined.

However, the facts told a different story: following the same “pre-count,” the Cepeda-Quicue team increased from 9,688,361 votes in the first round to 12,708,712 in the second round, meaning they surpassed the aforementioned 3 million votes by a significant margin, well beyond the 225,517 votes from Claudia López (who recently gave her open support) and the 1,009,073 from Sergio Fajardo (who remained reluctant to endorse). Cepeda achieved this.

Thus, if the voter participation increased from 23,978,304 in the first round (57.8% turnout) to 26,345,364 in the second (63.6% turnout), Cepeda and Quilcue managed to exceed the growth of around 700,000 votes across this jump in participation. Where, then, did de la Espriella find an increase of 2.6 million votes? The doubt is at least reasonable.

Given the myriad of inconsistencies—documentary, graphical, and logical—the matter becomes even more delicate with the news that the National Registry (the body in charge of counting and results) decided not to review every single vote from overseas, the sole way to verify if the figures are trustworthy, particularly when 66% of the supposedly recorded margin between de la Espriella and Cepeda resides there, a situation reminiscent of what transpired in Peru.

Democracy is served a la carte. If all of this were happening in Caracas in 2024, the events of January 3, 2026, would have advanced nearly two years. But at that moment, and even today, as the extreme right claims «victory» on both sides of the pendulum, it all suggests that votes, documents, and counts are less significant, and the “Shield of the Americas” along with Zionism are already mobilized, with de la Espriella invited as a guest of honor to join the golf course.

In the midst of attacks, dirty campaigns, and all kinds of interventions, someone should demand the ballots, ensure respect for the official result, and there should at least be a right to a clean count, which has never been guaranteed, and likely never will be, when the majority desire something other than the patronage of oligarchies and the ruling powers of the world. 

Matías Bosch Carcuro

La entrada Where Are the Ballots in Colombia? Questions Arise Over Election Integrity se publicó primero en El Ciudadano.