Colombia's Afro constituency seat allocation sparks controversy

On 17 July 2026 Colombia’s National Electoral Council (CNE) assigned one of the two Afro‑constituency seats in the House of Representatives to Winsner Sandoval Ibáñez of the Democratic Party. The decision provoked an angry protest from Oscar David Benavides, the elected representative of the Movement Libres, who argues his list met the constitutional threshold and should have received both seats.

The Afro constituency, which elects two representatives, received votes from 46 different lists. In March’s election the Movement Libres list obtained about 159,000 votes while the Democratic Party list received roughly 72,000. The CNE calculated an electoral quotient of 263,000 votes; since no list reached this figure, it applied a rule that the two seats go to the two most‑voted lists, giving one seat to Benavides and the other to Sandoval, leaving out Anyela Guiana of the El Naranjo list. Three of the nine CNE magistrates filed a dissent, contending that the threshold rule should have applied and that the decision was erroneous. Benavides accused the CNE of “stealing” the second seat and linked the outcome to former senator Eduardo Pulgar’s influence.