Presidential elections in Colombia
In the Colombian presidential elections , the President and Vice President of the Republic of Colombia are elected. The President of Colombia is also the country's head of state and government and the head of the armed forces. It appoints the ministers and the heads of the federal authorities with whom it forms the government.
Electoral provisions
The presidential elections in Colombia take place every four years, most recently in May and June 2014. A one-time direct re-election of the incumbent president and the vice-president is possible. The provisions on the election and office of the President are laid down in Articles 190 to 199 of the Colombian Constitution ; the corresponding regulations for the Vice President in Articles 202 to 205. A constitutional reform carried out in 2004 enables the incumbent to be re-elected directly once.
No other election may take place on the day of the election. It has to be repeated if the absolute majority of the ballot papers are abstentions , which has never been the case before. If none of the candidates achieve an absolute majority of the votes in the first ballot, a run-off vote will be held three weeks later between the two candidates who got the most votes in the first ballot. In this second ballot, the relative majority of the votes is sufficient . If one of the two candidates with the most votes dies or is permanently physically disabled, his party can nominate a replacement candidate for the second round of voting. If the candidate is unable to take part in the runoff for other reasons or if his party does not nominate a substitute candidate, a runoff will be held between the candidate with the second and third most votes.
New constitution 1991
The political constitution of Colombia 1991 ( Constitución Política de Colombia 1991 ) was adopted with the participation of the Colombian people in 1991 and lays down the legal recognition of fundamental rights for all Colombians. Since then there has been the office of Vice President in Colombia, who represents the President and is elected at the same time. The 1991 constitution initially provided for a lifelong ban on re-election, which was an extension of the ban on direct re-election of the president from the old constitutions of 1863 and 1886. This constitutional amendment was controversially discussed in Colombia and declared lawful by the Constitutional Court.
Regardless of whether the incumbent president runs for re-election, since the constitutional reform the vice-president can also be directly re-elected once. In the election, however, each person entitled to vote only has one vote and therefore elects President and Vice-President together. The president and vice-president are elected directly and secretly . Any Colombian who has had Colombian citizenship since birth and is over 30 years old can run for election . Every Colombian who has reached the age of 18 is entitled to vote.
history
After the collapse of Greater Colombia , the former Vice President Francisco de Paula Santander was appointed President of Congress in 1832 . In 1833 the first elections took place, in which he was confirmed by the electors in his office. In the elections in 1857 and 1861, the president was directly elected by the electorate.
After the introduction of a federal system with the adoption of the Rionegro Constitution in 1863, the electoral law was changed. From 1864 to 1884 the president was elected every two years by nine representatives from the nine Colombian states. With the new constitution of 1886, the presidential term was extended from two to six years and direct elections were reintroduced. Only men who could read and write were eligible to vote. Even so, there were only elections for vice president until 1904, when Rafael Núñez was declared president for life.
In 1910 the Constituent Assembly appointed the president, and general elections were held again from 1914. In the constitutional reform of 1910, the office of vice president was abolished; it was only reintroduced in 1991.
In 1953, Gustavo Rojas Pinilla made himself president through a military coup. He stayed in office until 1957. Official elections took place between 1958 and 1970, but since a pact was passed in a referendum in 1957, which among other things stipulated that the two major parties would alternate between presiding over 16 years, these elections were practically meaningless.
Presidential elections since 1990
Overview
supporting documents
- ↑ CONSTITUCION POLITICA DE COLOMBIA 1991 . bq-portal.de. Accessed May 3, 2017 (Spanish)
- ↑ https://www.bq-portal.de/de/db/rechtsgrundlagen/4649
- ↑ http://www.kas.de/wf/de/33.3671/
Web links
- Hans R. Blumenthal: Colombian presidential elections on May 28, 2006: causes and consequences of an announced re-election of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation on May 30, 2006
- The presidential elections and the America21 peace process on May 23, 2014
- Presidential election in Colombia, Federal Agency for Civic Education , May 2010
- Brief analysis - The presidential elections in Colombia . Austrian Institute for International Politics , July 2010
- From Uribismo to Unidad Nacional Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung , from September 2010