Hernández's response on being called the Colombian Trump 1:04
(CNN Spanish) --
One word could summarize the political career of Rodolfo Hernández, who will fight for the presidency of Colombia against Gustavo Petro after obtaining second place in the elections this Sunday: controversy.
Hernández, a businessman turned politician who rose to fame with an anti-corruption speech, had shot up in the polls in recent weeks and, despite the disbelief of some sectors, prevailed as a rival for the second round over other opponents. much better known as 'Fico' Gutiérrez.
ANALYSIS |
How did Rodolfo Hernández manage to reach the second presidential round in Colombia?
The trajectory of the former mayor of Bucaramanga has been full of controversial sayings and facts, but above all sayings that reveal his vision of a country marked by a history of violence, corruption and inequality.
Here, a review of some of the most significant since 2016, when he became mayor of the eastern city, until the campaign.
2022: the poor are "the best business in the world"
Hernández, from a working-class family, made his fortune entering the business of building affordable housing for the poorest families in the 1990s, when Colombia was going through a construction crisis.
At that time, "in the face of a possible insolvency to pay the credits acquired," says his website, he created PLAN 100, in which families could buy a house in 100 monthly installments that they pay directly to him.
Hernández's company was a construction company and a bank at the same time, earning interest on its own financing.
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His vision of the place of the "poor" and the "entrepreneurs" in Colombia, one of the most unequal countries in Latin America, has also generated deep controversy.
"We need businessmen to understand that the best business in the world is to have poor people with the capacity to consume, because the poor consume all the money," he said in January in a broadcast on social networks.
More recently, in an interview with Semana, he reiterated the concept: "The rich do better when the poor have money in their pockets, because the rich are the ones who set up production, who offer goods and services. The poor They are consumers."
And he continued: "Business is a jewel that the country has that must be taken care of."
Rodolfo Hernández: "Today the country lost to politicking and corruption" 3:10
2021: an 'anti-corruption' candidate accused of corruption
"I define myself as Rodolfo Hernández, an engineer who wants to get the thieves out of the government. That's all."
"Corruption is the biggest tax that all Colombians have to pay."
"Corruption is a disease that can only be cured with surgery and without anesthesia."
Those are some of the postulates that can be seen on Hernández's website, which obtained almost six million votes with the 'League of Anti-Corruption Governors'.
But he is, at the same time, a former ruler investigated for alleged corruption.
The Prosecutor's Office accused Hernández in 2021 of "undue interest" in the framework of the notorious Vitalogic case, which took place when he was still mayor of Bucaramanga.
The accusation, of which he has pleaded not guilty, points to alleged irregularities in a consulting contract on technologies for waste management at the El Carrasco landfill in Bucaramanga, when he was mayor.
The value of this contract amounted to 336 million Colombian pesos (a little more than US$85,000 dollars at current exchange value).
Hernández insists that "a peso" has never been stolen and, in April of this year, in a hearing he did not accept charges such as ideological falsehood, contract without compliance with legal requirements and improper interest in entering into contracts, according to the Prosecutor's Office.
The case is still ongoing.
Results of the 2022 presidential elections in Colombia in Bogotá, Medellín and Cali: this is how the vote turned out in the main cities
His scandals with the authorities have also earned him multiple disciplinary sanctions by the Attorney General's Office.
According to reports, by 2019 Hernández had 34 disciplinary investigations open in the agency.
CNN contacted that entity to request information about this, but has not received a response so far.
That year, alleging political persecution and when the prosecutor's office sanctioned him for alleged improper participation in politics, he resigned from his position as mayor of Bucaramanga.
2019: Venezuelan women are a "factory for making poor Chinamen"
Of all his statements that have generated controversy and rejection by large sectors of the population, one of the most remembered was made in 2019, when during an interview with Blu Radio he said that Venezuelan women were "a factory for making Chinese (children) poor".
Hernández was speaking about the care given to women who arrived pregnant from the neighboring country and declared: "Pregnant women are treated before childbirth, delivery and postpartum at the ISABU (Bucaramanga Health Institute), that's as far as we can go. We can't do anything With money from the mayor's office from all of us, without charging anything else, we are attending. And the births they have had are like 400 a year, a factory to make poor Chinese".
Later, as El Tiempo obtained, it was confirmed in his words in a Facebook Live broadcast in which he said that he was going to continue admitting them with "love" and "affection" but that they were advised to avoid "all those births that can avoid them at through the existing methodologies" because they are "children who are not going to have any hope of progress" and "that is true".
His statements generated strong criticism, including from former attorney Fernando Carrillo, who said that "machismo, xenophobia and aporophobia are bad advisers to public figures who should set a good example" and described Hernández's statements as a "gross attack."
However, his attacks on Venezuelans who arrived in the midst of one of the biggest migratory crises were not new: in 2017 he had already said that those who arrived in Bucaramanga were "the beggars, prostitution and the unemployed" but that "it was time" to receive them .
"Here we cannot kill them or throw lead at them, we have to receive them just as Venezuela received more than four million Colombians who left here because they had no job opportunities and they went there and they did well there."
More than 1.8 million Venezuelans are in Colombia, according to April 2022 figures from the Regional Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela, led jointly by UNHCR and IOM.
Whoever wins the presidency will have a strong impact on their lives.
Hernández's program affirms that a solidary migratory policy must be designed "preserving the interests and needs of Colombians", as well as reestablishing diplomatic and consular relations with Venezuela.
And once this happens, that a program be arranged so that it is the Venezuelan government that "finances the sustainability of its population living in Colombia."
Rodolfo Hernández has been a surprise in the presidential race and this proposes 5:37
2018: a coup in front of the cameras
In November 2018, the then mayor of Bucaramanga accused an opposition councilman, Jhon Claro, of not letting him speak and of having a "dictatorship."
He called him "scoundrel" and accused him of being in league with the corrupt.
In that exchange of words, Hernández got up from the chair and hit him on the head and also unloaded a barrage of insults that ranged from epithets to vulgarities.
It was "provoked human error," he excused himself later, when the Attorney General's Office suspended him for three months and a judge, in second instance, forced him to pay a fine of about 95 million pesos (about US $ 23,000 at the current exchange rate). that he asked to pay in 190 installments of about US$120 a month, local media reported.
In the video of the episode you can see how a policeman even intervenes to keep the distance between the two after the blow.
2016: when he proclaimed himself a follower of Adolf Hitler
"I am a follower of a great German thinker. His name is Adolf Hitler," he said in an interview with the RCN radio network in 2016, when he was mayor of Bucaramanga.
And he quoted what he claimed was a recommendation from such a thinker: "Don't expect things to change if we do the same thing all the time."
Years later, in 2021, when he was already starting his career for the presidency, Hernández apologized and said that he had had a slip: "In front of Hitler I apologize, anyone has a slip and I was wrong. The phrase was not It belonged to him, it belonged to Einstein. I apologize to the Jewish community and to all the Colombian people".
READ:
The 5 controversies of Gustavo Petro, candidate for the presidency of Colombia
Colombian Elections