'Iván Cepeda won' - Petro rejects Colombia's president elect
Key Takeaways
In Brief Petro alleged foreign-backed algorithmic fraud in Colombia's election.
He claimed Iván Cepeda, not Abelardo de la Espriella, won the vote.
The allegations came days before Colombia's presidential inauguration.
The outgoing Colombian president alleged algorithmic manipulation and foreign interference, insisting Iván Cepeda won the June presidential election.
Outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro has claimed Colombia's June 21 presidential election was manipulated through foreign-backed digital interference, alleging the fraud benefited president-elect Abelardo de la Espriella.
Speaking at a press conference in Bogotá on Monday, Petro said the election result was influenced by what he described as an organised system of algorithmic manipulation.
"What there was, was electoral fraud — algorithmic, systematic, and over an enormous volume of votes. And in favour of Abelardo de la Espriella, without the popular will being involved, and the method used was darkness," Petro alleged.
He also claimed foreign actors financed and supported the alleged manipulation.
"Foreigners used foreign money to carry out the electoral fraud that imposes a president who did not win the elections. Goodbye national sovereignty," he added.
Petro maintained that Historic Pact candidate Iván Cepeda was the rightful winner of the election.
"We are facing fraud and an undoubtedly deep institutional problem. And it is the swearing-in of an illegitimate president, because the one who won is named Iván Cepeda," he said.
The president also warned about the growing use of software and algorithms to influence elections, claiming similar technology had been used in other countries.
"All this development of electoral fraud based on the handling of software and algorithms (...) Any election in the world, any country, can be manipulated through this kind of software that they can sell. It is a business (...) Five cases in a row of manipulation by Israeli software, of popular elections in different parts of the world," he asserted.
Petro argued that Abelardo de la Espriella's inauguration would mark a loss of Colombia's democratic independence.
"As of 3:00 in the afternoon on Friday: colony. We lost 250 years of independent history; we went back to the beginning, only that the country that rules is no longer the king of Spain, but a genocidal criminal of the world named [Benjamin] Netanyahu, with an arrest warrant from the criminal courts that he himself wants to destroy to avoid his trial," he added.
Petro made the remarks four days before leaving the Casa de Nariño ahead of De la Espriella's inauguration on August 7.
This story is written and edited by the Global South World team, you can contact us here.
