Huge Decrease in Electoral Violence During Colombia Vote

October 25, 2015

Polls opened in Colombian local elections on Sunday as around 19.3 million people are expected to cast their vote.

Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos voted in local elections Sunday, saying he hopes never again will Colombia have to vote amid violence.

“I hope that we vote in peace and that this is the last election, after 50 years, that we go to the ballot boxes in the midst of an armed conflict,” said Santos as he cast his vote in central Bogota at 8:17 a.m.

The president added that there were 70 international electoral observers around the country to guarantee the transparency of the elections.

Defense minister Luis Carlos Villegas said that the day had begun quietly, and that so far the elections had seen the greatest reduction in violence in recent years. Violent actions against candidates, campaigns and votes during today’s elections, as of nearly 11 a.m. had fallen by 75 percent compared to the 2011 elections.

Nevertheless, just two hours before, General Leonardo Pinto, commander of the seventh brigade of the army, told El Tiempo that a soldier had been killed in the northeast of Antioquia, in a confrontation with guerrilla group National Liberation Army (ELN).

Violence against candidates in the lead-up to the elections remained high with 130 incidents occurring as of two weeks before the elections, according to the Electoral Observation Mission.

“Candidates for the Mayor of Bogota exercise their right to vote. In the image the candidate of the left, Clara Lopez”

Furthermore, the defense minister added that some 1.7 billion pesos (US$5.8 million) in alleged vote-buying money had been confiscated.

Polling stations across Colombia opened 8 a.m. local time Sunday.

Up to 34 million citizens are registered to vote to elect governors and representatives to four-year terms across Colombia’s 32 departments, as well as mayors and city councilors across nearly 1,100 municipalities.

One of the country’s most widely watched contests is the post of mayor of the capital, Bogota, a city of some 8 million. The mayor of Bogota is widely considered the second most important elected position in the country after the president.

A Gallup poll, released earlier this week, showed that the two leading candidates in Bogota’s electoral race are in a technical tie.

Center-right candidate Enrique Penalosa, a former Bogota mayor, and his political opponent, Rafael Pardo, the country’s former labor minister, are currently separated by less than five percentage points, a difference that falls within the poll’s margin of error.

Meanwhile, a Gallup Poll from last Thursday gave a slight edge to the right-wing candidate in the municipal elections for the country’s second largest city, Medellin. There, Juan Carlos Velez Uribe, of the right-wing opposition Democratic Center party, held 36.3 percent of voter intention, compared 32.4 percent for his rival Federico Gutierrez, from the We Grow movement.

According to a recent survey conducted by Ipsos-Napoleon, improving security is the top campaign issue in both Medellin and Bogota, with 59 and 73 percent of voters respectively saying it should be a main focus on the next mayor’s agenda.

​Ahead of the local elections, the National Electoral Council annulled 1.5 million identity cards, which had allegedly been unlawfully registered in polling stations.

So far this year 20 people have been killed in campaigning, according to the Colombian Electoral Observation Mission.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Huge-Decrease-in-Electoral-Violence-During-Colombia-Vote-20151025-0007.html

Source: teleSUR