Former Attorney General Viviane Morales, a lawyer of indisputable prestige and respectability, left an opinion of the utmost seriousness in her column in the newspaper El Tiempo. Let’s see: “When a president sows doubts without evidence and with false statements such as a failure to comply with the nonexistent order from the Council of State to the Registry to purchase vote-counting software or the supposed fraud in the 2022 Congressional elections, he is not exercising his freedom of expression; he is eroding the very foundation of institutional legitimacy.”
“The Court [Administrative Court of Cundinamarca] was already clear: the president’s statements lack solid and reasonable support and are based on erroneous interpretations of judicial decisions. The president has hinted that he might disobey the ruling by invoking a supposed conscientious objection.” To which the former attorney general replied that this argument is legally unsustainable. “Conscientious objection is not a general mechanism to avoid compliance with judicial decisions or constitutional obligations (…), to claim otherwise is to open the door to a dangerous relativization of the legal order.” For former Attorney General Morales, the president will not comply with the ruling for reasons of conscience, because he is actively participating in the electoral process – as Iván Cepeda’s debate leader, I would say – and needs to insist on the narrative of anticipated fraud to face the defeat he sees coming. He needs to delegitimize the electoral system and send a message to his base.
I don’t know if the president’s candidate will lose, but what I do know is that he wants to have an insurance policy “just in case.” If candidate Cepeda loses in the second round, the president’s supporters will cause “a big uproar,” and that includes those who have obtained postponements of arrest warrants and remain free. As lawyer Morales recalls, this was what was attempted in Brazil. “The Brazilian Court pointed out the organized and systematic nature of the disinformation, planned and executed by organized groups, such as digital militias, which was reinforced by the persistent use of the State’s own structure to program lies. This deliberate lie would be used as a mechanism to corrode public trust, social demobilization, and psychological preparation for violence, functioning as the ‘ideological glue’ of the criminal organization.”
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If, on top of all that, we add the threats to the presidential candidates, which led the State Department in Washington to demand that the Colombian Government step up security, in a statement saying they are working with Colombian authorities to support efforts to strengthen security, therefore – I say – we have to prepare for difficult days such as, for example, the storming of the National Capitol à la Trump or something of similar gravity. The ongoing talks with criminal groups that maintain public order disruption in several areas of the country, particularly Cauca and Catatumbo, raise greater concerns.
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