translated from Spanish: San Ramon: Aguilera requested to cancel a repeat of the municipal elections

Miguel Ángel Aguilera, mayor of San Ramón who lost the repetition of the municipal elections of the commune to Gustavo Toro (DC), formally asked the Second Electoral Tribunal of the Metropolitan Region to annul the elections and repeat them. As reported by BioBioChile, Aguilera denounced that the process was “irremediably flawed”, since only at 13:00 hours last Sunday, July 11, 100% of the 65 tables where the election was repeated were constituted. In the appeal filed by the questioned mayor, it is argued that this “brought as a main consequence that thousands of people during the morning hours left the polling places without having been able to cast their vote.” This claim was based on the fact that the Electoral Service had established that all polling stations had to be constituted at 10:00 a.m. that day. He also accused the RN candidate, David Cabedo, of visiting “in an inappropriate way each of the polling stations” of the Sendero del Saber School, addressing “a series of voters in the moments before casting their vote, as well as members of the polling station who were performing their duties.” He proceeded to take photographs of different voters when entering the ballot box and casting their vote,” adds the document presented by the communal chief. Aguilera claims that these should be considered as “acts of electoral interventionism that are of a very serious nature, since we are talking about repeated acts of intimidation and undue pressure that, on the day of the election and inside one of the polling places, a candidate who participates in the elections that are in full swing , and their companions, exercised over the members of the table and various citizens who showed up at this place, with the intention of freely and sovereignly exercising their right to choose their communal authorities.” On the other hand, he accused the winner of the elections, Gustavo Toro (DC), of “transporting votes” on 11 July, through the rental of vehicles. The text states that “witnesses observed in the vicinity of the polling stations people who, with a list in hand, were transporting voters in vehicles, maintaining radio communication between them.” It is also claimed that Toro’s representatives asked some voters for their identity cards to “take note of their data and the folio number of their votes, which evidences illegal and arbitrary actions that account for an obvious electoral interventionism, and a flagrant violation of the right of citizens to keep their vote secret.” Faced with these situations, Aguilera asked to annul the last election and repeat the elections again. The complaint has already been accepted for processing, where the Servel was officiated to “inform the schedule of installation of the 65 polling stations and send the instructions given by that Service in relation to the electoral process of Sunday, July 11, 2021”. It should be recalled that Aguilera was expelled from the Socialist Party after being linked to drug trafficking and on 26 July he will be charged with the crimes of bribery, illicit enrichment, and money laundering.

Original source in Spanish