Colombia will have the largest deployment of observers during the presidential elections

Bogotá.- Around 15,000 observers, both national and international, will accompany the first round of the presidential elections next Sunday in Colombia, a deployment that the president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Cristian Quiroz, described this Friday as the most extensive in the country's history.

"For the first time in history, the National Electoral Council is deploying on this scale. We have more than 13,000 observers throughout the national territory and more than 1,500 international observers," Quiroz stated in declarations to EFE, before an event in Bogotá where the mission was presented. According to figures from this electoral body, the mission brings together accredited international observers from 22 countries and 26 organizations, almost triple the 418 observers who participated in the second round of the 2022 presidential election.

You may be interested in: Tobías Crespo International Observer in Colombian elections by EuroLat Global Democracy Forum

This Sunday, May 31, more than 41.4 million Colombians are eligible to vote in the presidential elections in which the leftist Iván Cepeda, from the ruling Historic Pact, leads the voting intention in the polls. He is followed by the lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella, from the Defensores de la Patria movement, and Senator Paloma Valencia, from the Democratic Center. The mission includes representatives from the United States, Australia, El Salvador, Spain, New Zealand, among other countries, as well as delegates from organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS), the European Union (EU), Electoral Transparency and the Carter Institute. Quiroz assured that the international presence seeks to "strengthen confidence in the electoral process" and offer an external validation of the democratic guarantees of the country.

"Consolidating democracy requires foreign validation processes and that is what we do here: international guests to be here and verify a democracy as strong and solid as the one we have in Colombia," Quiroz said.

Observers participated in activities prior to election day, including visits to the Registrar's facilities, the entity in charge of organizing the elections, and to the electoral coordination centers, and on Sunday, election day, they will "verify the opening of polling stations, the arrival of jurors and witnesses, the development of the vote and the closing of the posts". For the Spaniard José Luis Mateo, professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Salamanca and member of the international observation mission, the presence of these teams is key to responding to the questions that some sectors have raised about the transparency of the elections. "Election observation is fundamental to neutralize those comments that, from what I have seen so far, are quite unfounded about possible fraud issues," he told EFE. Mateo, who already participated as an observer in the legislative elections of last March 8 in Colombia, assured that so far he has not identified elements that allow to question the integrity of the process. "The truth is that so far I have not detected anything that could call the election results into question," he said. The academic explained that the work of the observers consists of previously studying Colombian electoral legislation and verifying on the ground that the rules are followed during the voting day and in the scrutiny.