The president of National Electoral Council (CNE), Cristian Quiroz, assured this Saturday that they hope to announce in less than an hour the results of the second round of Sunday’s presidential elections in Colombia, which will be contested by the far-right Abelardo de la Espriella and the leftist Iván Cepeda.
“21 days ago in the first round we had zero complaints and a peaceful day. In 40 minutes we delivered results,” Quiroz said during a meeting with journalists in Bogotá.
The official stressed that the electoral authority hopes that the results of this Sunday’s preliminary count will be known before 5:00 p.m. local time (22:00 GMT), that is, one hour after the polls close.
Quiroz reiterated that this second presidential round will be the most closely monitored election in the history of Colombia since it will be accompanied by at least 1,694 international observers from organizations such as the European Union (EU) and the Organization of American States (OAS), among others.
This Saturday, international delegations participate in a technical-academic day, with presentations on disinformation and social networks, technical aspects of the electoral process and logistical coordination for observation.
On Sunday, observers will be in different regions of the country to accompany the opening of tables, voting, closing, pre-counting and counting.
More than 15,000 national observers will also participate in the day, as well as nearly 250,000 electoral witnesses registered by the campaigns of Cepeda and De la Espriella that they will be monitoring the pre-counting of votes once the voting stations close.
