BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) – Left Senator Gustavo Petro celebrated his lead in the first round of Colombia’s presidential election in a way most politicians would: in a conference hall full of hundreds of supporters as confetti rained down on him.
The man he will meet in the runoff on June 19 had a different approach.
Rodolfo Hernandez sat at his home kitchen table and talked to his followers for five minutes on Facebook Live.
“Today won the country that does not want to continue with the same politicians, that does not want the same people who brought us to our current situation,” he said.
The 77-year-old populist sparked a wave of disgust at the country’s state of affairs, which until a few weeks ago would have been a shocking place in the runoff, rising at the end of the campaign alongside more conventional candidates.
He ran a tough campaign – unrelated to any major party – which was conducted mainly on social media with a message that focused on reducing corruption and reducing wasteful government spending,
He is now in a position to pose a serious challenge to Petro, a former rebel who he himself has long considered a political rebel and who will be Colombia’s first left-wing leader if elected. Petro now, at least for some eyes, looks like the more conventional candidate – even if he scares much of the country’s conservative establishment.
Hernandez received 28% of the vote in the six-candidate field on Sunday, while Petro received 40%, according to opinion polls.
Hernandez is a millionaire who made his own money, became rich with real estate after growing up on a small farm. He says he paid for his campaign with his own savings, not donations.
Some in Colombia compare him to former US President Donald Trump and describe him as a right-wing populist. But others say the analogy is deceptive.
“This is not a tough right-wing candidate,” said Will Freeman, a Princeton University scholar who specializes in Latin American politics and met with Hernandez in February for a lengthy interview. “One of the great things he talks about is poverty, inequality and hunger. When I spoke to him, he said several times that he was frightened by the idea that people are born into poverty in Colombia and have no way out of it.
Hernandez also said he supported peace talks with the National Liberation Army – the last major rebel group left – to abduct and kill his daughter in 2004.
Freeman said that during the interview, Hernandez also expressed admiration for two other Latin American leaders: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico and Nayib Bukele of El Salvador – both often seen as stubborn populists, but neither came from the right.
Hernandez started politics in 2016, running for mayor of her hometown of Bucaramanga. He said he was tired of complaining about corrupt local officials and was persuaded by his brother, a philosopher, to try to change the way the city was run.
Leading a movement called “Logic, Ethics and Aesthetics” – which had the pi symbol as its logo – Hernandez won and eventually left office in 2019, with an approval rating of over 80%.
But his mayoral tenure was also marred by an investigation into allegations that he had taken concessions from a waste disposal contractor. Hernandez denies the allegations and fights them in court.
As mayor, Hernandez became known for his public scolding of bribe-seeking police officers and for hitting a city councilor who accused his son of corruption. Hernandez was suspended for several months due to the incident. He also caused confusion by saying that migrant women from neighboring Venezuela had become “factories for raising poor children”.
He stunned Colombians in 2016 when he said in a radio interview that he was a fan of Adolf Hitler. He later apologized, saying he meant Albert Einstein – a strange confusion that actually made sense because the physicist was the source of the claim Hernandez had mistakenly attributed to the dictator during the interview.
But the scandals do not appear to have affected Hernandez’s stance with voters eager for change in a country struggling to recover economically from the pandemic and overcome ongoing violence.
Inflation in Colombia is the highest in two decades, poverty has risen by 8% in 2020, and armed groups continue to fight in some rural areas for territory abandoned by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia after group signed a peace agreement with the government in 2016
Many Colombians blame these problems on conservative parties that have ruled the country for decades. In Sunday’s election, Federico Gutierrez, a candidate backed by traditional national parties, received just 22% of the vote.
“The success of Hernandez and Petro is a harsh rebuke for the ruling class,” said Sergio Guzman, director of the Colombia-based risk analysis consulting firm. “It also means that Colombians want a radical version of change.
Guzmán said that with only three weeks until the second round, Hernandez is in a good position to win over voters who backed Gutierrez but feared Petro’s economic proposals, which include higher taxes, pension reforms and more government costs. Gutierrez said Sunday he would support Hernandez because he did not want to “risk the future of Colombia”.
As a presidential candidate, Hernandez said he would reduce government excesses by starting with a plan to turn the nation’s presidential palace into a museum. Hernandez also said he wanted to sell buildings owned by Colombian diplomatic missions abroad to finance loans for Colombian students.
The candidate criticized the ruling class of the nation and promised rewards for citizens who condemn corrupt civil servants. He also said judges would have to report on the progress of anti-corruption cases. And like Peter, he said he wanted to renegotiate Colombia’s trade agreements with other countries to benefit local farmers.
Laura Gill, a political scientist at Haveriana University in Bogota, said many of Hernandez’s proposals were unfeasible and showed he was a populist with “very little knowledge” of how government works.
“He is Colombian Trump,” Gill said, adding that if Hernandez wins, he will “bring Colombia’s democratic institutions to the brink.”
Add Comment