Colombia’s Conservative Party on Tuesday asked its presidential pre-candidates to sign an agreement promising to respect the results of the primary election.
Party President Fernando Araujo, sent a letter to the party’s five aspiring pre-presidential candidates: Noemi Sanin, Andres Felipe Arias, Marta Lucia Ramirez, Jose Galat and Alvaro Leyva, outlining the terms of the agreement.
In the letter Araujo proposes that all pre-candidates “agree to accept without objections the measures taken by the Honorable National Electoral Commission,” to recount the primary votes.
The agreement also reminds pre-candidates that the affidavit they signed upon officially enrolling as pre-candidates for the party states that they can not “support at any moment candidates from other parties or political movements that participate in the 2010 presidential elections, without authorization.”
Arias announced earlier today that he will accept the results of his party’s primary election and will support the candidate winner. Monday, Arias challenged the vote’s legitimacy, due to the delay in vote counting by Colombia’s Electoral Commission.
Colombia’s Electoral Commission called for a recount of the primary because not all the votes were counted by the deadline of 11 PM Sunday.
The recount, which will be done in public and take place between 9 AM and 9 PM, may take four days to complete.
Representatives from the Organization of American States (OEA) will also be present to observe the recount.
So far Arias is the only Conservative pre-candidate to accept the agreement.