The blank vote leads in the polls and threat with a crisis in Colombia
February 21, 2014 by KCBA-admin Leave a Comment
Bogota, Feb 21 (Entravision) .- The vote in white is the preferred choice of Colombians for the presidential elections of May next, according to the polls published so far, an option that to achieve more than 50 % of the votes would generate a serious crisis and oblige repeat elections with new candidates.
The latest poll prepared by the signature Figures & concepts and disseminated on wednesday revealed that 30 per cent of respondents would opt for the blank vote, ahead of the current president and candidate for reelection, Juan Manuel Santos, which includes a 26 per cent of the bearings, and the candidate Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, with a 7 per cent.
Zuluaga is supported by the former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), staunch opponent to the Government of Santos and who she aspires to win a seat in the Senate in the legislative elections of March 9.
In early February, the Ipsos Public signing another survey with very similar results: the 27 per cent of Colombians vote in white, 25 % of them would be by Saints, while 8 % depository of its confidence in Zuluaga, ahead of other applicants.
That trend continued in all of the surveys, which also indicate that nearly 20 per cent of Colombians that they will go to the polls the next May 25 has not yet decided the direction of its vote and responds to the classic "don't know or does not answer" of the polls.
The sum of Colombians to the that by now not convinced by the proposals of none of the candidates to occupy the house of Nariño (headquarters of the Executive) is half of the electorate, that if the day of the elections will opt for the white vote in strained a new call in which, in accordance with the law for political reform, could not repeat the current candidates.
There is one precedent, and recent: on 30 October 2011 the blank vote reached 56.7 % of the votes in the mayoral elections in Bello, a municipality in the Medellin metropolitan area (northwest) of close to half a million inhabitants, 43.3 % obtained by the single candidate.
"The people punishment the corruption and the little space left by the parties," he said at that time one of the promoters of the blank votes in beautiful, Light Imelda Ochoa.
The elections were to be repeated two months later, on December 18, this time with six candidates, and the conservative Carlos Alirio Muñoz was won with the victory while the blank vote only grazed in 5 %.
The blank vote in Colombia is considered "a political expression of dissent, abstention or disagreement, with political effects" and is "a valuable expression of dissent through which promotes the protection of the freedom of the elector", according to a ruling of the Constitutional Court.
"As a result of this recognition, the Constitution he ascribed a decisive impact on electoral processes oriented to provide single offices and public corporations of popular election," he added that ruling in 2011.
The next May 25 Colombia will play its history with the future of the peace talks with the FARC and the ELN guerrillas, a topic that focuses the electoral debate between the pro- and anti-give a political end to armed conflict and achieve a signature that half a century ago resists it.
But the peace of Santos does not seem to convince to the mass of voters, nor the promise of more war flying the uribism, two ends away from today of the sectors that in the past few months have starred social protests, called structural reforms and that could opt for the vote in white to show their dissent.
In the last presidential vote in 2010, the blank collected 223,977 votes in the first round, a mere 1.5 %, which amounted to 3.4 % (444,274 votes) in the second round he faced to Santos with the academic Antanas Mockus.