09:19 AM
The Fifth Section of the Council of State, in an early ruling, referred to the lawsuit for electoral annulment filed by the former governor of Antioquia Luis Pérez Gutiérrez against the election of the current governor Andrés Julián Rendón, in which the former alleged that Rendón had practiced psychological violence against him, which ended in deception of the voter.
In a 37-page document, the High Court denied the claims of the controversial former mayor and former governor Pérez, who had filed the lawsuit at the end of 2023, alleging that a type of political persecution occurred against him. who sought to relate him as necessary with President Gustavo Petro and the former mayor of Medellín Daniel Quintero, facts that according to him made his electorate crumble in the face of such associations.
It should be remembered that in December 2023, Pérez filed a lawsuit in the Council of State, in which he requested the annulment of the election of Andrés Julián Rendón Cardona as governor. the cancellation of the credential granted to Rendón, and the holding of new votes for Governor.
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According to Pérez in his lawsuit, he registered with the ASI as a candidate for governor for the Piensa en Grande coalition. Therefore, he never stated that he was an ally or had support from the President of the Republic Gustavo Petro or the then mayor of Medellín, Daniel Quintero Calle.
Despite this, according to him, Rendón deployed “multiple acts to intimidate the voter.” “In the sense of demonstrating repeatedly and massively, through social networks, Luis Pérez was the candidate of Petro and Quintero”.
“Such defamatory maneuvers meant that on the day of the respective elections, many of Pérez’s voters abstained from voting for him, as was their genuine desire. Furthermore, the plaintiff stated that he seeks the nullity of the censored act, considering that he is involved in the grounds for nullity. in the sense that relating him to the President of the Republic and the former mayor of Medellín was part of a strategy of deception that constituted psychological violence, misinformation, deception and anxiety systematically caused to the voters.“, reads the document.
In his lawsuit, Pérez submitted as documentary evidence 79 links to press releases, as well as statements on social networks by different users, which he even attributed to Rendón, which according to him showed that constant “operation” of relating it to Petrism and Quinterism.
Likewise, it requested that the Registrar’s Office and the National Electoral Council provide candidate registration documents. in the last elections and others, among them those of Daniel Quintero and that of President Petro.
However, the Council of State indicated that the evidence provided by Pérez was denied because it considered that “it lacks relevance and usefulness to analyze the censures against the claimed election, since it is not clear how the content of said means of conviction would account for the alleged deployment of multiple defamatory maneuvers by Rendón against Pérez in the sense of relating him to the President of the Republic and the former mayor of Medellín, as part of a strategy of deception that constituted psychological violence against the electorate.”.
According to the Court, Pérez also did not explain how this evidence, as well as other interrogations that he had requested, would demonstrate the nullity of the elections. “Certainly, the office does not observe the connection between the means of proof requested and the censorship proposed to determine the occurrence of the facts set forth in the complaint.”.
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In the lawsuit it appeared that the Council of State had also been requested to summon 18 people to testify, including former candidates from eastern Antioquia, experts in Neuroscience and Communications and even common citizens from several municipalities of Antioquia who had supposedly changed their vote before the alleged massive accusation of associating Pérez with Quintero and Petro. In the same request, Pérez asked to include an interrogation of former senator Julián Bedoya, who would explain why he was not part of the Historical Pact.
Likewise, an intervener in the lawsuit identified as Romel Darío Aguirre Holguín had requested that psychological expert opinions be carried out, an interrogation of President Petro, as well as an accounting expert report to estimate the economic damages that Pérez had suffered.
Once again, the Council of State rejected both the interrogation requests of Pérez and Aguirre, because apart from the fact that they did not give clues on how to contact the people to be interrogated by the Court “It is not possible to see how those testimonies are conducive, relevant and useful in order to demonstrate that psychological violence was exercised against the electorate as stated in the lawsuit.”.
Given this situation, the Council of State decided to deny the exception of lack of standing in the proposed case, as well as denying the request for evidence submitted by the plaintiffs, which would dismiss the lawsuit filed by Pérez against Rendón. For now it has not been known statement of the two politicians before the decision of the High Court.
