The President of Colombia refused to recognize the results of the counting of votes in the presidential election

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has said he does not recognize the results of the preliminary vote count in the presidential election, according to which opposition candidate Abelardo de la is in the lead. Espriella, and will focus only on the official results of the verification of ballots by election commissions.

"As president, I do not accept the results of the preliminary count conducted by the private company of the Bautista brothers," Petro wrote on the social network X.

By "Bautista brothers" Petro means the Bautista Palacio family — owners and managers of Thomas Greg & Sons, which has been involved in organizing electoral processes in Colombia for many years and is one of the largest contractors of the National Registration Office. The company organizes election stages, logistics and software for preliminary vote counting.

The Head of State claims that during the last week before the elections, the algorithms of the software used for counting votes and processing the results were changed three times. According to him, the system has data on 800 thousand people who are absent from the official voter list.

"At the moment there are two voter registers: the official one and the one that is used in the Bautista brothers software and contains an additional 800 thousand people," the president said.

Petro also said that the already disputed results of individual polling stations, in his opinion, indicate the addition of "hundreds of thousands of votes without the presence of relevant voters."

The President stressed that the preliminary vote count is not legally binding.

"In accordance with the law, the results of the vote verification commissions working under the guidance of judges of the republic are mandatory for the results that the president will take into account and recognize," the head of state said.

According to the latest data from the national electoral system of Colombia, after processing 99.9% of the acts from the polling stations, the candidate from the opposition movement "Firmly for the Motherland" de la Espriella is gaining 43.73% (10.35 million votes), and the candidate of the ruling coalition "Historical Pact" Ivan Cepeda — 40.91% (9.69 million votes). None of the candidates receives more than 50% of the vote, which means the need for a second round of elections on June 21.