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The Senate and Chamber First Committees approved this Friday the reform of the National Electoral Code, leaving pending the debate on the possibility of dismantling the Guarantees Law, which was about to sink the initiative on Thursday night.
Thus, the plenaries of both corporations will take up the issue in the next few days, after a subcommittee of parliamentarians meets with the federations of mayors and governors who, as clarified in the session, were the proponents of dismantling the rule that prevents hiring during the campaign season.
The precision was made by the representative Angela Robledo, because on Thursday the opposition had assured that it was a proposal from the Duque Government.
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In turn, the senator and coordinator rapporteur of the reform project Armando Benedetti explained that on Thursday night spokesmen from different banks had a meeting with officials of the Executive and it was agreed that the presentation for the second debate will not be drawn up until reach an agreement similar to the one reached in 2006 between the opposition and then-President Álvaro Uribe to give life to the Law of Guarantees.
“It was agreed to vote on the current article and hold a multi-party table between the Government and political parties on the Law of Guarantees, because we need to be guarantors of tranquility in the next elections,” said the congressman, also referring to the fact that the reform will come into effect by 2022.
In fact, Senator Angélica Lozano exposed this last agreement as one of the reasons for voting negatively on the bill.
“The Electoral Code project is dangerous, I prefer to sink it. They have a majority to approve. We have managed to remove dangerous parts, but they approved issues that threaten the integrity of the electoral body. It is a long, complex and momentous project. Dangerous to release it on the 22nd ”, he wrote on his Twitter account after modifying his positive vote.
For the subsequent discussion, positions such as that of Senator Temístocles Ortega were consigned, who maintained that “the Guarantees Law does help make the elections transparent. That is why it must be maintained. The State with correct planning does not paralyze ”, and that of his colleague Germán Varón, who pointed out that“ the economic situation of the country does not warrant that the State be paralyzed in electoral time ”.
Already approved
Around noon, once the vote was taken, Benedetti made the following summary on Twitter about what was approved: “Parity in the lists, gender equality in the Registrar’s Office, Poll regulation, new voting modalities, improvement in the scrutiny process , the Law of Guarantees is maintained ”.
Indeed, after a heated controversy, on Thursday the first joint legislative committees agreed that face-to-face voting will continue in the country, in addition to mixed electronic voting and early voting for Colombians abroad, but that for now it will not be implemented. remote electronic voting or online voting.
“Colombia should allow at least one possibility of non-remote voting, because if the pandemic or any adverse situation prohibits us from going to vote in person, we must give citizens and the generation of the future the possibility of having an alternative model not face-to-face, not everything can be a face-to-face vote and we are seeing that daily in the situations of our lives, ”said the registrar Alexander Vega during the discussion of this point of the reform.
However, in the end, the speaker coordinator synthesized that “there is going to be a voting modality that is face-to-face, which can be mixed or only one, but ultimately what we want to do is that you go, click on a button, say which one candidate goes to vote and goes to the ballot box. There the traceability is broken. But also, if there is a difference between the machine and the ballot box, the ballot box will be chosen. Therefore, the urn continues to exist and is what we call mixed. There is another, not in person, which in principle has been designed for Colombians abroad, who are 7 million and only 300 thousand vote ”.
Similarly, another of the points of the Code approved this week by the members of the Senate and House First Committees is the one that would force women to occupy 50% of the lists that are integrated for popularly elected positions and not the 30% as it happens today.
The proposal was presented by Senator Ana María Castañeda and Representative César Lorduy and although it was widely supported by the women of both commissions, it also demanded hours of discussion, as it will surely happen when it is analyzed by the plenaries.
“This is a political distraction with certain electoral causes, these proposals do not solve the dignity of women in Colombian society at all,” insisted the representative to the Chamber Gabriel Vallejo.
In a similar sense, the political scientist Fernando Giraldo assures that it is not enough that women can have as many positions on the lists as candidates as men, but that it is necessary that they can count on all the economic, material, social and cultural conditions and the party to be able to campaign.
“Because they are given the same quotas or a percentage of quota on the lists and yet the party tilts its resources to favor male candidates, or women have to campaign and at the same time work, get home and attend to the family, while men only dedicate themselves to the political campaign ”, explains the expert.
Therefore, in the face of the controversy that will take place in the second debate, he argues that social and cultural conditions must be transformed “so that the quota rule has greater effectiveness and we achieve a greater representation of women, who can do it as well as men and can make the same mistakes. The problem is that in competition women have disadvantages that do not depend on a gender quota but on the social system, not only on the political system ”.
What the EOM says
“From the Electoral Code we are concerned that due to the improper conduct of an observer, the electoral authority revokes the accreditation of an electoral observation organization, affecting the transparency of the process and the exercise of a citizen’s right,” the Observation Mission wrote yesterday Electoral, MOE, on its Twitter account once the reform initiative was approved in the first debate.
And he added that the reform bill proposes economic sanctions for electoral witnesses who fail to perform their duties. Why is it worrisome? Because it discourages their participation in electoral processes ”.
He also indicated that the finger designation of delegated registrars does not generate confidence in the electoral process. “For this reason, in each election the National Registry must transfer its officials to provide greater guarantees.”
Instead, he stressed that the project progresses in making the counting software owned by the State.
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