Is the lack of budgetary autonomy of electoral authorities a risk?

Hours before the Senator Angelica Lozano would denounce the 77.4% cut in the budget for the Registry Office in the middle of the pre-election yearhe Registrar Hernan Penagos He referred specifically to the risk that the lack of budgetary autonomy of the entity he heads represents for electoral processes.

“In relation to the risks in electoral processes, one of the main risks in Latin America is related to the budgetary autonomy of the electoral authorities.“, he said at the forum ‘Interactive dialogue: politics and the construction of a common future’, during the 79th UN General Assembly in New York.

(More: National Budget: Congress denounces ‘not very soft’ blow to the 2026 elections).

Later, he added: “Today, some of this autonomy has been lost, mainly due to one factor: the budget. Most electoral bodies derive their budgets from demands or requests to the government, which, in some way, compromises their work as arbiters of democracy.“.

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Penagos warned that as long as the budgets of the electoral bodies do not derive from the annual dialogue with the executive and legislative branches, but are based on the Constitution, “Electoral authorities will be much more powerful and will be able to carry out their functions more independently.“.

(Read more: Colombian economy’s recovery is expected to continue in the coming months).

It is worth remembering that, after the budget cut that the entity had for this year, The registrar said that there was not much impact in view of the elections, since the contracts were made in 2025.However, the current situation is that there would not be sufficient resources for the year in which the contracts will be carried out.

On Tuesday, September 24, the economic commissions of Congress did not reach an agreement on the amount of the Budget for 2025. According to experts, the Legislature would still have until October 20 to agree on the PGN for next year. However, The Government has said that the Budget would be issued by decree with the figure that was included in the project that it presented.

PORTFOLIO
*With information from EL TIEMPO – POLITICS