Sousse, a town of Cundinamarca which has no more than 12,000 inhabitants, will today become the first municipality where a revocation of mandate in the current period of mayors and governors.
There are 5,205 people empowered to decide whether Ximena Ballesteros Castillo, from the Democratic Center, leaves office. For this to happen, a minimum of 1,504 people must participate in the day – 40 percent of the voters when the president was elected, according to the threshold established by law – and 753 votes are needed to revoke the mandate, which is the majority.
It will be voted after 13 months of having begun and it is the first of 121 that have been filed since January 2021 that reaches the polls. Of these, 29 have been dismissed, have not reached the required signatures or their promoters have decided to step aside, 90 are moving forward and two are ready to vote, today and Cúcuta, which still has no date and has been postponed twice.
Although the initiatives are valid within democracy, they are a wearing figure, analysts have pointed out, since they consider that this implies being in a constant campaign. In addition, some analysts have described it as ineffective and give as an example that since the figure was born in our country, only one president has been revoked.
It is so exhausting that it can take up to 13 months to process in a small town with around 12,000 inhabitants. Although it should be noted that the covid-19 pandemic it delayed the initiatives and signatures could not be collected for several months, which caused it to merge with the election year.
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complex processes
The process has several bottlenecks that can lengthen the process and even cause it to crash. The first, analysts have explained, is that obtaining 30 percent of signatures on the electoral roll to recall the president is not complex and many committees do not reach the necessary support. This happened in Cali and Manizales, where they did not have the support and the recalls sank.
Added to this are the inconveniences of certifying signatures. Once it is collected, its validity is verified, but many turn out to be invalid, either due to impersonation, because the document numbers do not match or because people who do not have their ID registered in said municipality signed. An example is the case of Medellín, where around 300,000 were collected to revoke Daniel Quintero, but more than half were declared invalid.
Additionally, if the previous procedures are passed, the certification of the resources comes. The National Electoral Council (CNE) evaluates if the ceilings were violated and that there is no irregular financing. This step, although it seems simple, is key and several have fallen for this, such as Enrique Penalosawhen he was mayor of Bogotá between 2016 and 2019, which collapsed due to possible irregularities in resources.
And at the same time as the previous steps, the leaders resort to judicial actions that are legal, but they hinder the normality of the initiative and with this they can save time, taking into account that by law they can only be carried out during the second and third mandate period.
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In fact, Quintero has filed several complaints so that the firms are reviewed again – they have already been certified three times – and has presented evidence of irregular financing. That is why today he dares to say that the recall against him “is dead”.
And if the previous steps are overcome, the greatest challenge follows, summoning 40 percent of the people who participated on election day to the polls, and this, experts say, is the most complex. “It is very difficult because it is an ordinary election and it is complex to summon a large number of citizens,” explained Yann Basset, from the Universidad del Rosario and analyst of elections and territorial dynamics of the vote.
However, he adds that it cannot be an easy process, since it has to be guaranteed that if a mayor is revoked, after a majority elected him, it is because he is not doing his job well and it is not about political interests.
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How much would they cost?
If the more than 90 revocations that are in force reach the polls, the State will have to pay around 430,000 million pesos, according to the Registry, to carry out the voting days. This is another drawback that processes could have.
According to the budget Colombia by 2022the Registry it has 2.1 billion for the elections, its operation and the two recalls ready to vote. But there is not the money to pay for the others, if they prosper.
EL TIEMPO consulted the Ministry of Finance about this situation, and they explained that, effectively, there are only the resources for those who are already approved to vote, but this does not mean that the budget cannot be taken out to develop the initiatives that are advancing. “At the time, and together with the Registry, we will review the budgetary movements that are necessary for this purpose and we will also look at the relevance or not of such resources,” they reported.
This indicates that there is no fixed budget for revocations because it is something that has not yet been defined. Elections may be called or processes may die. However, as the Registry requests the resources, that request will be reviewed and each case will be analyzed to obtain the money.
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possible lock
There are several recent antecedents in which there were differences on the financing of the sessions. One of them happened in 2017, when the Ministry of Finance refused to finance a vote for the recall of the mayor of Sogamoso, Boyacá. Finally, the Ministry transferred the resources, but this delayed the vote for 10 months.
Professor David Roll Vélez, professor at the Department of Political Science of the National University and director of the research group UN-Partidos, assured that situations such as the one mentioned above can generate mistrust among citizens in these democratic initiatives.
“While we think about what is going to be done in the recall elections, because an electoral reform must be carried out, we have to rethink whether the recall continues or not, and if it continues, how to make it continue well, so that it works better. Meanwhile, we must try to ensure that the processes that take place are not going to be truncated by gaps like this one – messes with resources – or by another series of instruments so that it is turned off from the beginning or has an obstacle that is not the will of the citizens”, commented the expert. And he ruled that “while it is there, we must find the formula so that citizens do not think it is a dead letter.”
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Basset comments that the value of these cannot be an aspect to question their legitimacy. “The cost argument cannot be a reason to delegitimize these mechanisms, they correspond to political rights that are in the Constitution,” argued the teacher. That is why he considers it necessary that in this type of process there is not a deployment of tables and positions as if it were an ordinary election. “Not everyone has to participate in a citizen participation mechanism, the Registry should invent a light deployment for that with few posts,” explained the academic.
Some analysts have pointed out that there will not be many recalls that reach the polls, since they would fall due to lack of time.
This is because carrying this out in 10 months can be complex due to the obstacles and legal actions that the leaders can put in place so that the law clarifies alleged irregularities. And the same promoters can give up, seeing that the process does not advance.
The truth is that these initiatives are stalled today and it can be complex for the Registry, bearing in mind that we are in an election year. But there is a factor that led to this damming: the pandemic. Without a pandemic, many could have been evacuated last year and today we would not be voting on the first recall campaign for the Congress and Presidencyas some have been used for electoral purposes.
MATTHEW GARCIA
Nation’s Editor
On Twitter: @teomagar
matgar@eltiempo.com
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