34 thousand votes for Colombia’s Senate were nullified by the State Council due to irregularities in the 2006 Senate elections, said Rafael Ostau de Lafont, president of the State Council. The votes will have to be recounted.
The 2006 Senate elections have been demanded as electoral fraud, a fact that let many Senators’ seats empty in the coming while. Irregularities in 34 thousand votes were denounced before the court by former Inspector General Edgardo José Maya Villazón. The State Council established that there had been fraud in several regions like the northern Caribbean coast, Santander, Chocó and Valle del Cauca departments.
The involvement of right wing paramilitary groups in the 2006 Senate elections has been pointed out as the main reason of fraud, according to El Tiempo. A number of 34 thousand votes are involved, according to what Ostau de Lafont confirmed to Spanish press agency Efe. The votes need to be recounted.
One of the Senators whose election definitely was annulled is Martha Lucia Ramirez, former Finance Minister, who resigned from the Senate to run for the 2010 Presidency. She was still working for the State six months before the election, which according to Colombian electoral law, is not allowed.
The fraud
The cancel of those votes will change the actual composition of Colombia’s Senate. Some senators would lost their positions under denounces of buying votes, moving electors, impersonation, inconsistency in the forms of diligence, fake IDs and other illegal actions that suspend the validity of their nomination to the maximum legislative body of the country.
The votes should be recounted, an action that will take time, according to the decision of the Court, while former Minister Martha Lucía Ramírez has been legally disabled in the position for an evident irregularity at the time of the election. Ramírez was working for the State six months before the elections, a fact that disqualified her nomination as candidate according to Colombian electoral law.
The senators can ask the revision of their cases, though their period in the Congress is near to end with the 2010 elections. They can continue with their normal activities until the 5th section of the Council of State gives the communication establishing who will be suspended and who can remain.
By his part, the Ministry of Justice, Fabio Valencia Cossio, said to the press that the decision of the Council of State will not affect the normal activities of the Senate and that the government respects its decisions.
“Al ordenar un reconteo de los votos podría cambiar la composición del Senado, es decir, podrían entrar unos y salir otros, pero realmente desde el punto de vista institucional, el actual Senado sigue funcionando hasta que se dé esa decisión del Consejo de Estado.”
“Ordering the recount of votes could change the composition of the Senate, specifically, some [Senators] would enter and some of them would leave, but from the institutional point of view, the current Senate will continue working until the decision of the Council of State is known“, said the Minister.
Martha Lucía Ramírez
Martha Lucía Ramírez was the Minister of Defense of the first presidential period of Álvaro Uribe. She resigned in order to present her name to the Parliamentarian elections of 2006. Recently, she left the Congress because she wanted to run for the presidential elections of 2010 and she is doing a current campaign. In this state of things, she was suspended from her parliamentarian position when she was not more in the Congress.
In a communication issued on 7 July 2009 on her official site, Ramírez said that she got the news on the decision of the 5th section of the Council of State that she was suspended from the parliamentarian position.
‘Ante esta difícil circunstancia a la que me estoy enfrentando, quisiera manifestar en primer lugar, mi profundo respeto por las instancias jurisdiccionales y por sus decisiones.’
‘Before this difficult circumstance I am facing, I want to manifest first my deep respect for the judicial instances and their decisions.‘
She said also that ‘she never has been contractor of the state and that the fact pointed out by the Court is for a sponsorship of Bancoldex for 10 million pesos for different events on the FTA in relation with former activities when she was a private adviser‘.
Ramírez argued that she concluded that there was not legal impediment to present her name for the 2006 elections to the Congress and she underlined her work as senator for the ‘benefit and possibilities of progress of all Colombians‘.
Ramírez did Law at the Javeriana University of Bogotá and she is Fellow of the Harvard University. She was director of Incomex, Minister of Finance, Minister of Foreign Relations, Minister of Defense, Ambassador in France and Senator, a position that now was nullified by the Court’s sentence. She is currently aspiring to be the first Colombian woman in the presidency of the country.