The runner up in Colombia’s 2018 elections said Sunday that his party no longer recognized the legitimacy of President Ivan Duque and would challenge the results.
In a column on news website Cuarto de Hora, Senator Gustavo Petro said Duque’s victory would not have been possible without the support of the mafia.
Duque ‘raping and sodomizing’ Colombia’s democracy
Consequently, the opposition leader said he would “take action before judicial bodies, “but fundamentally, the most important field of action is the conscience of our fellow citizens.”
Colombia Humana does not recognize the legitimacy of the current president of Colombia, nor that of his vice-president, who has also been muddied by obvious links to drug trafficking.
Senator Gustavo Petro
Petro on Friday said that “Colombia Humana won the elections,” adding on Sunday that evidence Duque’s party conspired with drug traffickers to buy votes added to existing evidence of tampering with ballots.
If crime is the way to get elected in Colombia, society is led only to the slaughterhouse, to oppression, to self-destruction.
Senator Gustavo Petro
The opposition senator, who lost to the president with a difference of 2 million votes did not say what legal action he would take to overturn the results.
Colombia’s ruling party claims 2018 election fraud scandal is leftist conspiracy
Despite evidence voter ballots had been tampered with, Petro initially admitted defeat, but said “Duque is not the legitimate president of Colombia” after evidence revealed that the president’s far-right party sought to buy votes with the help of the drug trafficking organization of Marquitos Figueroa.
Vice-President Marta Lucia Ramirez has additionally been embarrassed by revelations her husband was in business with a drug trafficker of the Medellin Cartel and paramilitary organization AUC, both defunct.
The scandals had already severely damaged the government’s perceived legitimacy, but Petro’s claim he won the elections and would challenge the results take political tensions to a new level.
