Petro responds if he would run again for other elections if he does not win 6:21
(CNN Spanish) --
At first glance, perhaps Gustavo Petro and Rodolfo Hernández, who will contest the second round of the presidential elections in Colombia, could not seem more different.
And, when it comes to their personal trajectories and political speeches, they do have big differences.
However, his victory on May 29 in the first round of the Colombian presidential elections also exposes their similarities.
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Petro, who obtained 40.32% of the votes, and Hernández, who achieved 28.15%, are two candidates who break with the political establishment, dominated for years by Uribismo, as the followers of the former president are designated. Alvaro Uribe.
(Along with the right-wing candidate 'Fico' Gutiérrez and the centrist Sergio Fajarado, Uribe and President Iván Duque can also consider themselves defeated in the electoral campaign:
see the winners and losers of the first round here
).
And, in this sense, the triumph of both fits the continental panorama.
Analyst Daniel Zovatto explains in this regard that in the last 13 presidential elections in Latin America (2019-2022), "except in the case of Nicaragua —which was an electoral farce—, in all 12 elections the party that was in government lost. In other words, there is a very large demand for change and alternation."
And that represents both.
"Two models of populism"
For Zovatto, Petro and Hernández represent two "models of populism."
"Colombia is going to a second round between two models of populism or between two populist proposals: one from the left, and another I would say to a certain extent from the right, although it is really very difficult to locate this character Rodolfo Hernández," he said about it.
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ANALYSIS |
Rodolfo Hernández's strategy to reach the second round 7:34
Points of contact in their proposals: Venezuela, the ELN, fracking and more
There are some points of agreement in their political platforms.
Both agree with the reestablishment of relations with Venezuela, although they have put forward different proposals to deal with the migratory crisis in the neighboring country.
Within the framework of its vision of environmental protection, Petro has been emphatic in its will to prohibit fracking or hydraulic fracturing.
Although Hernández's position has not seemed so clear from the beginning, he recently stated that he was opposed to this practice.
And he also spoke in favor of the "right to abortion under the stipulated conditions", a right that the Historical Pact led by Petro has committed to respect based on the ruling of the Constitutional Court.
Both candidates are also in favor of a dialogue with the ELN.
But, beyond these points of contact, profound differences can begin to be seen.
A Bernie Sanders vs.
donald trump?
Hernandez's comparison to Donald Trump has resonated in recent weeks.
If we were to follow the parallel: with which US politician could we draw similarities in the case of Petro?
With the independent senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders, says Juan Carlos López, chief Washington correspondent for CNN en Español.
Petro's position on the political spectrum leaves no doubt: he defines himself as a "progressive" leftist leader and, in fact, if he wins, he would become the first leftist president of a highly traditional and right-wing country.
Placing Hernández does not seem to be so simple because he does not define himself as left or right.
However, his tendencies have always been seen as right-wing, CNN correspondent Fernando Ramos explains here.
And 'Fico' Gutiérrez, the right-wing candidate who did not make it to the second round, quickly announced his support for Hernández for the definition.
some different paths
This is the third attempt by Petro, 62, to reach the presidency of Colombia.
The last one was in 2018, when he lost in the second round against the current president, Iván Duque.
His life has been crossed by political activity: he was a personero and councilor of Zipaquirá, representative to the Chamber, attaché of the Colombian embassy in Belgium, mayor of Bogotá and senator of Colombia for two periods.
He also bears the burden of having been part of the M-19 guerrilla that led to one of the worst tragedies in the country's history, the taking of the Palace of Justice (although he did not participate directly).
The trajectory of Hernández, 77 years old and a newcomer to the arena of the presidential battle, could not be more different.
Hernández made his fortune after entering the business of building affordable housing in the 1990s, when the country was going through a construction crisis.
There he created a plan in which families could buy a house in 100 monthly installments that they pay directly to him, who acted as builder and bank at the same time.
He was a councilor for the municipality of Piedecuesta, in Santander, in 1992, but he never attended or took office as a lobbyist.
Years later, in 2016, he became mayor of Bucaramanga and resigned before finishing his term.
Second round in Colombia will be "between two models of populism" 1:10
Controversies at the head of the mayor's offices
Saving the enormous distances, in his trajectory there is a constant: the controversy during his periods at the head of the mayor's offices.
Hernández, in fact, is formally accused of alleged irregularities in a consulting contract on technologies for waste management in the El Carrasco landfill, in Bucaramanga, when he was mayor.
He has pleaded not guilty.
In 2019, alleging political persecution and when the prosecutor sanctioned him for alleged improper participation in politics, he resigned from his position as mayor of Bucaramanga.
Petro, for his part, was dismissed from the Bogotá mayor's office, which he had accessed in 2011, after a disciplinary investigation for handling a crisis related to the garbage collection system.
However, the story ended with a very different turn for him: he won an international legal victory before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which ordered his reinstatement as mayor of Bogotá in 2014 and allowed him to catapult himself as the leftist leader that has been built until today, according to analysts.
The priorities of Petro and Hernández
Petro is methodical when speaking.
He pauses.
He is theoretical.
Hernández, on the other hand, tends to express himself in a very colloquial way and often with rudeness.
The differences in his way of presenting himself to the public are as noticeable as those in the focus of his speech.
The backbone of Hernández's speech can be summed up in this sentence: "I define myself as Rodolfo Hernández, an engineer who wants to get the thieves out of the government. That's all."
The fight against corruption has been his banner and mantra, and to achieve this he proposes, among other things, "not
lie, not betray the voters and achieve a small modification to the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure to remove impunity".
Petro's focus, on the other hand, has been mainly on the transformation of the economic model to move from extractivism to production, with a strong emphasis on the energy transition and agrarian reform.
Political trajectory of Rodolfo Hernández and the legal case against him 4:40
Two examples: tax reforms and the vision of the poor
For the Historical Pact, the current tax system has a "clear bias in favor of excessively rich people."
Petro proposes a tax reform that, among other aspects, focuses on dividends: it will be mandatory to declare them and they will always have to pay taxes.
The candidate has said that the highest tax burden would go "on the 4,000 largest fortunes in Colombia."
Hernández proposes to organize the country tax-wise with one main bet: to lower VAT.
The idea is "to make VAT payment so practical that taxpayers do not have mechanisms to evade their commitment to the Nation."
"We propose to apply a general VAT rate of 10%, almost half of the current percentage, which keeps the family shopping basket free of tax and reclassifies the other excluded goods and services," he explained.
One of the most recent controversies in which Hernández was involved, and in which Petro quickly intervened, is linked to the vision of poor people in the country.
"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," Hernández said in January in a broadcast on social networks.
"It's not about the poor being able to buy something from businessmen, it's about stopping being poor," Petro retorted.
The figure of the vice president
Both Petro and Hernández have women as running partners.
However, so far his role has been quite different.
Francia Márquez, from the Historical Pact, obtained a historic vote in the March internal elections and positioned himself as the leader of the left.
He has played a central role in the campaign.
Marelen Castillo, on the other hand, is little known in Colombian politics.
Only three months ago her name began to timidly sound in the public after being chosen as Hernández's vice-presidential candidate.
She has described herself as a "perfect stranger".
With information from Melissa Velásquez, Germán Padinger, Fernando Ramos, Paula Bravo and Sebastián Jiménez
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