ANALYSIS |
Rodolfo Hernández's strategy to reach the second round 7:34
(CNN Spanish) --
Bucaramanga, in the north of Colombia, was the scene in which the political career of Rodolfo Hernández took off, who now seeks to reach the Casa de Nariño.
The 'engineer', as he calls himself, became mayor in 2016 after winning by a difference of less than 5,000 votes with the candidate who followed him and launched a management to which he now makes continuous references.
Bucaramanga, known as "Pretty City", is the capital of the department of Santander.
Having amassed a fortune in the construction business, Hernández signed up to run for mayor with an independent civic movement called "Lógica, Ética y Estética."
And he managed to prevail over a former liberal mayor, with his speech against "politickers", with just over 77,000 votes (in a universe of nearly 500,000 qualified).
Now that Hernández will dispute the presidency with Gustavo Petro in the second round of the Colombian elections, a review of the ups and downs of his mayoralty may give clues about his performance as a manager.
The accounts of Rodolfo Hernández in Bucaramanga, his battle horse
One of the achievements of which Rodolfo Hernández boasts the most is having reduced the deficit to zero.
At the beginning of 2016, according to his management report, the treasury deficit in the municipality exceeded 236,000 million pesos.
His government allocated resources to clean up finances and, by the end of 2019, there was no deficit.
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In addition, as he has stated in interviews and insisted on his networks, he left 100,000 million in savings for the works that were underway when he left the mayor's office.
His austerity policy implied a reduction in expenses in the contracting of services and, most notably, in the diffusion and advertising budget that was reduced to approximately one tenth for 2019 compared to the figure for 2015.
An example of the cost reduction that he defends is the cost of transporting children, which was reduced by approximately 3,000 pesos per person during his administration.
The healthy figures of the municipality led Fitch Ratings to announce an improvement in Bucaramanga's short- and long-term ratings in 2019.
Public contracts, not only in Colombia but throughout Latin America, are one of the great channels of corruption in public management.
Hernández, faithful to his anti-corruption discourse —although perhaps in contrast to the corruption case in which he is linked— has highlighted the hiring processes during his mayoralty in Bucaramanga.
From 2015 to 2019, for example, the number of bidders in public tenders went from an average of 1.4 to 40.2, according to their report.
His report also highlights the implementation of a strategy to make the hiring of public employees transparent and the expansion of the evaluation system for municipal employees.
Why Rodolfo Hernández called Fico Gutiérrez 1:38
What works did he do?
Hernández's mayor's office carried out 503 works and left another 42 "walking", according to him.
In fact, those are figures that he has repeated on several occasions (although, on the other hand, on his website he speaks of some 300 works. According to the Colombiacheck portal, in the mayor's office they were estimated at 500, but two out of five could not considered high impact).
His personal information speaks of 92 sports venues, 36 schools, 29 parks, 8 health centers and 18 agoras.
Three years after he left the mayor's office, some of those that resonate the most are of a cultural nature, for example the completion of the Santander Theater, which opened its doors in 2019, the reconstruction of the Gabriel Turbay Public Library, the strengthening of the Cultural Center of the Oriente and the Neomundo Convention Center, which has now been advertised on networks as part of the campaign for the presidency.
The management of Venezuelan migration
Hernández affirms that he will restore relations with Venezuela if he is elected president.
His approach to the migratory crisis was surrounded by controversy and earned him accusations of xenophobia when he was mayor, for example when he stated that women from the neighboring country who arrived pregnant and had their children in Bucaramanga were a "machine for making Chinese (children). poor".
In 2019, according to his report, just over 5,500 Venezuelans had been treated in the health system compared to four who had registered in 2016 and there were about 2,800 citizens of the neighboring country in educational institutions.
The 20,000 "happy homes" that never reached their recipients
Broken promises are also under the spotlight.
The best known is the 20,000 "happy homes" program which, according to letters that had been delivered to part of the inhabitants during the campaign, involved the construction of 20,000 homes for the poorest families in the city.
Hernández left the mayor's office without having complied.
"Couldn't everything be done? Well, no," he said recently in an interview with La W. There he emphasized that his commitment was actually to deliver 20,000 urbanized lots and ensure that homes could be built at more affordable prices, but that he did not He was able to buy the land because when the mayor's office was handed over to him, he found that the accounts were not what he expected.
"They didn't tell me (...) that they had stolen everything, they looted Bucaramanga," he said.
This was not the only unfulfilled proposal.
In the health area, for example, one of the goals was the construction of five centers and, according to their balance, only 11% was met.
In the area of mobility, what was proposed was not reached either.
Media controversies and problems with the Attorney General's Office
His mayoralty was also dominated by controversy.
In November 2018, he 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.
The 5 controversies of Rodolfo Hernández
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.
His scandals 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 Attorney General sanctioned him for alleged improper participation in politics, he resigned from his position as mayor of Bucaramanga in September 2019.
Petro and Hernández, under the magnifying glass for complaints and accusations 2:49
The complaint of corruption that drags in his career towards the Casa de Nariño
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, indicates that there were alleged irregularities in a consulting contract on technologies for the management of waste in the El Carrasco landfill.
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.
The judgment of public opinion in Bucaramanga on Rodolfo Hernández
In the 2019 Bucaramanga How We Are Going public perception survey, Hernández reached a 62% favorable image.
52% of people said that he managed well during his mandate, and 47% of those surveyed stated that they trusted his management, against 28% who said they distrusted it.
Another indicator that may be key to their support is linked to the perception of corruption.
By 2019, 39% of the population considered that corruption had decreased, almost double the 20% who maintained that it had increased.
In the Gallup measurement of June 2019, before his resignation, Hernández had a 64% approval and 28% disapproval.
LOOK: How was Gustavo Petro's passage through the mayor's office in Bogotá
With information from Melissa Velasquez
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