The most relevant moments of the meeting between Petro, Fico and Fajardo 4:15
(CNN Spanish) --
Sergio Fajardo has proclaimed himself the standard-bearer of the center option in a highly polarized Colombia.
But that third party that he represents was one of the big losers in the March 13 elections due to voter volume.
Fajardo insisting on his presidential aspiration, he has made a clean slate to try to reach the House of Nariño in 2022.
Sergio Fajardo's detractors call him "lukewarm", an expression that indicates that he does not take sides for one thing or the other.
A sector of the left says that with its "lack of clear positions" on issues of national interest it helps the right (as when he supported the blank vote for the second presidential round and Iván Duque, the candidate of the right-wing Center party, won). Democratic).
For its part, the right believes that it is an ally of the left because of its liberal positions on social issues and the peace agreement.
"They tell me that I am from the FARC, that I am a Castrochavista — an expression they use to say that we want Colombia to be like Venezuela and Cuba — which is false," Fajardo told Carmen Aristegui in 2018.
"They are looking to divide the country. In polarization it becomes friend and enemy. There is no more," he added.
This Sunday, after learning the results of the internal consultations, in which Centro Esperanza was the winner with some 723,000 votes, he said that he would seek the votes of the majority of Colombians "who believe that we are the way to overcome that polarization ".
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"We already saw this movie 4 years ago," Fajardo told his followers on Sunday about the polarization between the left and right candidates.
In 2018, the center candidate was third in the first round with almost 4.6 million votes;
Gustavo Petro, from the left, was second with 4.8 million votes, and Iván Duque, from the right, obtained 7.6 million votes, in the first round.
That centrist discourse is a way out for millions of Colombians who are tired of polarization and permeate an important part of society, which sees in Fajardo an option to change the course of the country.
"In his political career he has sought to avoid the polarization that has characterized the country since 2002, especially in terms of government and opposition," Patricia Inés Muñoz, professor and researcher at the Faculty of Political Science and International Relations, told CNN en Español. from the Javeriana University.
Francia Márquez, the electoral phenomenon that achieved the third highest vote in the internal consultations in Colombia
On November 13, 2022, Fajardo was the winner of the Centro Esperanza internal consultation with some 720,000 votes. Here he appears with the other candidates from the center in Bogotá. (Credit: JUAN PABLO PINO/AFP via Getty Images)
Sergio Fajardo's career
Sergio Fajardo was born in Medellin, Antioquia, on June 19, 1956. The 65-year-old candidate comes from a wealthy family and admits himself as "a privileged member of the wealthy society," for which he has been criticized.
He is a mathematician by profession and has a Master of Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, in addition to other university degrees.
His political life began in 1999 when he was a candidate for mayor of Medellín, but it was not until 2003 that he was elected to that position, which he held until 2007. In 2010, he was the vice-presidential candidate with Antanas Mockus, a politician recognized by promoting citizen culture and "not everything goes", which is the general line of the policy defended by Fajardo.
Between 2012 and 2015 he was governor of the Department of Antioquia and in 2018 he launched his first campaign for the presidency, whose formula for the vice presidency was Claudia López, current mayor of Bogotá.
"In politics, it is often considered that passions and extremes are what arouse people's participation," Fajardo told CNN in 2018, assuring that what he knows how to do is "unite."
"We have to be different without being enemies and that is called citizen culture," he assured Carmen Aristegui, in 2018, when talking about his vision for the country.
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an independent candidate
Throughout his political career, Fajardo has represented independent movements of citizens who are outside the game of traditional parties, something that has worked for him in his past candidacies for local positions such as Mayor of Medellín and Governor of Antioquia, but it would be a disadvantage facing a presidential campaign, Esteban Salazar, coordinator of Democracy and Governance of the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation, PARES, told CNN.
"Sergio Fajardo is a character who throughout his life has maintained an x-ray of governing without ties to shared political commitments, without making an agenda that commits him to political machinery.
"In that sense, this has generated an image for him as an independent candidate outside the dynamics of the parties that have had representation in Congress and with powers at the local level, and that poses an important challenge in terms of governability, and in the possibility of building coalitions," Salazar told CNN en Español.
Fajardo, who for many years was a teacher and this earned him the nickname of Professor in past campaigns, speaks methodically, with a soft Paisa (Antioquian) accent and calmly explains his positions, which can generate controversy among the most radical.
Those of Fajardo are opinion votes, says Salazar, and perhaps that is the difficulty that the candidate is going through to obtain the massive vote.
"Fajardo and the center candidates are independent opinion votes from large cities, from large departmental capitals that have a closer level of connection with him, but that have difficulties in scenarios such as rurality... and areas of the more remote regions of the country where such a clear message does not connect to be able to attract people to vote for it," says Salazar.
Whales, research and little momentum in 2022
In politics, the message and the form communicate.
And a situation that might seem anecdotal has weighed on him in the campaign four years later.
Coming in third place, in 2018, and with a very large electoral flow that could define the second presidential round, Fajardo -defender of the blank vote-, chose to leave his voters free to vote for any option, and went to see whales in the Colombian Pacific just a week before the final elections, something that earned him harsh criticism from various sectors.
A dream of many years that I finally realize this weekend: go see the whales in the Pacific.
Away from the madding crowd.
In the jungle.
– Sergio Fajardo (@sergio_fajardo) June 8, 2018
At the start of his campaign, in June 2021, the candidate explained that he felt "exhausted" after such a marathon campaign and needed a break.
While he apologized for the whale issue, he didn't for voting blank.
And that decision, that of going to see whales, has played against him in this election.
"It has made a bit of a dent in his image that he was unable to work with others after that electoral defeat; it has also made a dent in Sergio Fajardo's ability to converge that center around him, in the consideration that some have of the depth of the center's proposals to be able to connect with citizens," says Muñoz, from the Javeriana University.
And the outcome of the 2018 campaign left him badly beaten, which could explain the lack of enthusiasm with which he started his candidacy in the final stretch of this campaign.
The theme Hidroituango
Another blow to his image has been suffered by the investigations against him.
One of them in the case of the Ituango Hydroelectric Project, known as Hidroituango, by the Comptroller of Colombia for a case of fiscal responsibility in which Fajardo and other people were accused of the detriment of 4.3 billion pesos (little more than US$ 1,100 million) for the bankruptcy of the Hidroituango project.
According to the entity, there was a "destruction of the net present value of the Hidroituango project."
Upon learning of the ruling, Fajardo said that "the actions of the Comptroller's Office are not correct" and said that he was calm and willing to answer to the authorities for the case.
In January 2022, the Comptroller closed the process and did not find Fajardo responsible.
The candidate then said that justice was done: "Truth and decency always come out ahead even if sometimes they take [years]."
And although he came out ahead in this case, his image did suffer because his electorate is that of the opinion vote, according to Salazar.
"That was a political damage that hit him much more than the issue of the whales," said Salazar.
"It was a blow that really, in his banner of the fight against corruption, independence, in his fight not to have any scandal, weighed heavily on him," says Salzar.
"The majority of the Hope Center coalition vote is an opinion vote that is really gaseous, quite ethereal."
Fajardo currently has an investigation before the Prosecutor's Office for embezzlement by appropriation in favor of aggravated third parties and contract without compliance with legal requirements when he was governor of Antioquia.
This is a different investigation than the Hidroituango case and has to do with a bank loan when he was governor.
Given this, the centrist candidate said in February of this year on Caracol Radio that it is "persecution" by the Prosecutor's Office and that there is a political sector interested in him stepping aside from his political aspirations.
"I am not going to let myself be taken out because I have worked with transparency, with honesty," said Fajardo, who assured that these investigations have been carried out to "stain" his name.
low favorability
After announcing his resignation from politics after the 2018 presidential elections and his disappearance for a few months before resuming the campaign, Fajardo dropped significantly in the polls.
While in June 2018 his favorability was 67%, according to an Invamer-Gallup poll, by February 2022 it plummeted to 25%.
And his unfavorability rose, going from 13% in June 2018 to 33% in February 2022.
Colombia's needs are not the same in 2022 as they were four years ago.
And the analysts consulted agree that Fajardo lacks a connection to the country that emerged after the pandemic, where some social issues are more urgent than others.
"We come from a dynamic of a pandemic, of a social outbreak, of people who see that there is a disconnection between political parties and citizens. But surely Fajardo has not known how to channel or assume those flags in the best way," said Salazar.
In addition, Fajardo seems not to have evolved in four years and that is why its proposals would not be responding to the different country that Colombia is after the pandemic.
"The Sergio Fajardo of 2022 has many more similarities than differences in relation to the Sergio Fajardo of 2018," says Muñoz.
“It seems that what has been maintained is more than what has changed, and I think that this is also explained by the decrease in the electoral results that he obtained in that consultation in relation to what he had achieved in 2018,” Muñoz assures.
the final stretch
Fajardo continues in the fight to reach the Presidency of Colombia and succeed Iván Duque, whom he says was not prepared for the position.
"He was not prepared to govern, he has never had a clear direction in leading our society as president," Fajardo told CNN in June 2021.
Now, following his straight line to avoid touching the extremes, Fajardo, coined in a black vice president and from an impoverished region —the former governor of Chocó and former minister Luis Gilberto Murillo— hopes to summon more sectors and convince the undecided to vote for him, for his career and the transformations he says he has undergone from public office in his native region.
"I am at a point in my life when I am prepared to lead. I have shown how to lead, how to work," says Fajardo, who hopes to stop being a candidate and lead the country as of 2022.
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This content was published on March 18 and updated on April 29
Elections ColombiaSergio Fajardo