President Gustavo Petro asserts that he 'distrusts the transparency of the 2026 elections'

President Gustavo Petro stated on Tuesday night, July 8, that he distrusts the transparency of the elections that will take place in Colombia in 2026.

He said this in a brief post on his X account in which he responded to a news story about the contract for the production of passports in Colombia.

"I distrust the transparency of the 2026 elections," was the short phrase the president wrote on his X account.

The future of passport manufacturing has been the focus of public debate in recent days, even leading to the resignation of Foreign Minister Laura Sarabia, considered one of the most important figures in President Petro's administration.

The production of these documents, currently handled by the multinational Thomas Greg & Sons, will be transferred to the National Printing Office and the Portuguese Mint, although according to a response from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to a petition from Senator Angélica Lozano, the new model will not be ready to operate as of September 1, as previously announced by the National Government.

At the end of June, Sarabia had announced a third extension of the manifest urgency request for Thomas Greg & Sons to handle the preparation of the documents for 11 more months, but hours later the head of state overruled him.

This Tuesday, the national government and a delegation from Portugal held a meeting at the Casa de Nariño to advance the signing of the contract for the preparation of travel documents for Colombians. After more than six hours of meetings, however, an agreement has still not been signed.

The president's comment also came one day before the National Registry's award of the 2026 election logistics contract on July 9. Of the nine interested parties, only the Unión Temporal Integración Logística Electoral 2026 (UT ILE 2026), which includes Thomas Greg & Sons, submitted a bid.

This Tuesday's meeting is not the first time the Colombian president has questioned the transparency and guarantees of the 2026 elections.

He already did so on July 2 in a thread on X in which he referred to the audio recordings released by the Spanish newspaper El País in which former Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva was heard talking about a plan to remove him from power.

"(Leyva) told us he had all the tools to execute a plan and bring him down. His place would be taken by Francia Márquez (the vice president). He had evidence that Petro could no longer hold office and that if this went ahead, the president would have no capacity to respond," one of the sources told the aforementioned newspaper.

On that occasion, the president spoke of a lack of guarantees in the upcoming elections because "the former registrar, the registrar, and the electoral council" have acted against "his rights."

"What guarantee can we have in the upcoming elections if the former registrar, the registrar, and the electoral council have acted against our rights? The coup d'état was brewing, and Leyva was not alone. The investigation into a case like Odebrecht, or into this coup d'état caught red-handed, or into third parties in the paramilitary case, requires a prosecutor free from pressure," the president wrote.

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