What resources do the parties have?
Technically, what the Registrar’s Office issued on December 24 is a technical report in which it explained the reasons for validity or exclusion of each of the 383,685 firms analyzed, as well as a summary of the total of valid and annulled supports, cause by cause. . Now, this report was sent to the promoters of the mechanism, to the mayor and was published to the general public on the page of the Registrar’s Office. Within the next five business days, which is the term that is currently running, the parties may dispute in writing said report explaining the technical grounds for contradiction, or the reasons for validity or exclusion of the records presented. In white silver, the determination to cancel or validate signatures that met or did not meet the requirements, respectively, will be under discussion. These grounds are objective, according to the regulations, namely: if a person signed more than once; if the data is not readable; if the signature has incomplete, false or erroneous information; if the identification number does not correspond with the name; or if the undersigned is not part of the Medellín electoral roll. Once that term has expired without any objection being presented, it will be understood that the report is final and will be sent to the national registrar of Civil Status. In other words, that current term ends this Friday. In case of contradiction to the technical report, the Electoral Census Directorate will respond to them during the following 10 calendar days, issuing a definitive technical report that will be sent to the parties and public for the citizenship.
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DEADLINES AND TIMES TO BE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT
Mayor Quintero and the recall movements have four days left from today to present the evidence that disputes the legitimacy of the signatures and the entire process that led to the collection of support for the revocation. That is, next Friday, December 31, the Registrar’s Office must have in its possession the evidence of the alleged systematic falsification that, according to the mayor, the revocation movement incurred.
Then the ball will fall to the Registrar’s Office, which has 10 calendar days to study Quintero’s evidence and objections and the motions promoting the revocation of the technical summary of signature verification that it published last Friday, December 24. This answer should be given before Monday, January 10. If after this analysis the Registrar’s Office ratifies the validity of the signatures, it issues a certification that approves the call.
So, assuming that the entity takes the last day of the term, the governor would be notified on January 11. From that moment on, you have eight days to set the date of the day whose term cannot exceed two months. Governor Aníbal Gaviria just returns from vacation on January 18, according to decree 4903 of December 22. In his replacement between yesterday and that day Luis Fernando Suárez was appointed.
Under this scenario, the possibility opens up that the recall day coincides with the legislative and inter-party consultations that will take place on Sunday, March 13.
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Will the vote coincide with the legislative ones?
A discussion is raised about the imminent possibility that the recall vote coincides with the legislative elections scheduled for March 13, 2022. The fact is key because the recall vote needs to exceed a threshold to be valid: it must be registered at a minimum 40% of the valid votes of 2019, that is, at least 314,720 votes are required. If the revocation is voted on that Sunday, March 13, there is a greater probability of exceeding the threshold required by law. Once that minimum participation has been accredited, the decision of half plus one will be imposed. Article 261 of the Constitution expressly states that the election of Congress will be held on a date separate from the election of departmental and municipal authorities. There are analysts who believe that this is not a prohibition because the revocation is not to elect an authority, on the contrary, it is a mechanism of citizen participation of popular origin. Former magistrate Guillermo Mejía thinks otherwise and says that there would be a prohibition derived from Law 1757. Fredy Chaverra, political analyst at the University of Antioquia, considers that there is no express exclusion and that the coincidence with an ordinary election would be fortuitous due to the deadlines that have been supplied with the latest actions of the promoter movement and the Registrar’s Office. In addition, he adds, it would be the ideal in terms of logistics: “it could substantially lower the cost of the deployment of electoral logistics. So it could also be considered as appropriate from the point of view of efficiency, but also as a political criterion ”.
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the scenarios posed by the vote
If the vote is inclined with half plus one in favor of the revocation, Quintero’s departure from office will be immediate. Governor Aníbal Gaviria will be responsible for appointing a mayor in charge who must belong to the same Independientes movement, which endorsed Mayor Quintero. Whoever is in charge will assume a maximum of two months, the term that the governor has to call new elections. Any citizen who meets the constitutional and legal requirements could appear on this election day, including, of course, representatives of the Independientes movement. The one who would be prevented from participating in these new elections, of course, is Daniel Quintero. Since the mayor was elected by popular election (1988), Medellín has not had any president in charge. You have to go back to 1973 to find a similar antecedent. Institutional uncertainty is precisely one of the most critical debates in the midst of this process. Some former candidates and political forces who opted for the position in the 2019 elections have stated that they are not measured to assume an administrative period halfway through and that the ideal is for a candidate with a technical profile, even a civil servant, to assume the 19 or 20 months that remain.
On the other hand, if the revocation does not succeed, this mechanism will not be able to be tried again for the rest of Quintero’s mandate, and the only case of a revoked mayor in the country will continue to be that of Nelson García, who left the mayoralty of Tasco, Boyacá, in August 2018 after 2 years in office.
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