Rodolfo Hernández wants to be a prophet again in Santander

One year was enough for Rodolfo Hernández to compete electorally again. This time it will be in his land, where he feels more comfortable. After losing in the second round of the presidential elections and giving up his seat as senator after just two months in office, the septuagenarian engineer refuses to lose relevance among his compatriots and is a candidate for the Governor of Santander. His visibility contrasts with the short time he has been in electoral politics: in 2015 he ran as a candidate for Mayor of Bucaramanga and won, despite the fact that the polls placed him in the last places. With this new aspiration, he seeks to revalidate his power, which seems diminished if compared to the recent past, when the investigations against him had not advanced and his anti-corruption discourse was less hackneyed. He is still, in any case, a visible candidate with good possibilities.

The characteristics of Hernández’s campaign show how contradictory his figure is. A good part of the 10.6 million Colombians who supported him in the second round did so because they wanted to prevent the victory of the left, and now everything indicates that the Pacto Histórico, the coalition of President Gustavo Petro, will join him. This eventual alliance could cost him victory in a department in which the left has not been strong, especially in conjunction with the penalty imposed by the Attorney General’s Office for the corruption case known as Vitalogic, in which he is involved along with his son Luis. Carlos. It is about a 14-year disability to work in the public sector that is suspended, waiting to be evaluated in a second instance, which is why he can aspire to the Governor’s office. That not only affects his image so much, but it can deter voters, because if he wins and the decision is upheld, he would have to step down from office.

The bid for the governorship

Hernández left the Bucaramanga mayor’s office in 2019 with an unprecedented approval rating of 84%, according to the polling firm Guarumo. He endorsed his popularity in the presidential elections, when in the first and second round he captured more than 65% of the votes in the department and won sufficiently in 85 of the 87 municipalities (Petro only defeated him in Barrancabermeja and Puerto Wilches). But one thing is the regionalist fervor to have its own president and another is the political retreading in Santander, with local rivals, the sanction of the Attorney General’s Office, the resignation from the Senate and the support of Petrism.

He faces a diverse group of contenders, though none as well known as he is. The electoral titans of the department, the Aguilar family, which includes two former governors and the current one, Mauricio Aguilar, will not have their own candidate. However, some of its members have expressed their support for the former mayor of Floridablanca, the second most populous municipality in the department, Héctor Mantilla. The 29-year-old lawyer denied that he had officially received these endorsements and stressed that he “is not anyone’s politician.” Although he has family relationships with figures from the Conservative Party —his uncle Jorge Humberto Mantilla was a congressman for that group; his godmother is former Vice President Martha Lucía Ramírez—, he received the endorsement of La U, Colombia Renaciente, En Marcha and Fuerza de La Paz.

Another visible candidate is the retired Army general Juvenal Díaz Mateus, who signed up for signatures and with the endorsements of conservatism, liberals, Uribismo and Cambio Radical. His brother Iván served as a conservative congressman between 1998 and 2008, when the Council of State stripped him of his investiture, and was subsequently convicted of the so-called yidispolitica, the scandal in which it was demonstrated how the government of Álvaro Uribe offered perks to legislators so that they approved the constitutional reform that gave free rein to the presidential re-election. The other brother of the general is Luis Eduardo and he currently occupies a seat in the Chamber.

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Closer to progressive sectors appears the green deputy Ferley Sierra, who also obtained the endorsement of Dignity and Commitment and is a visible critic of Governor Aguilar. With less visibility, for the moment, the campaigns of Julián Silva, a young lawyer from the University of Los Andes who has made politics with Sergio Fajardo and is a candidate for New Liberalism, are advancing; Luis Mauricio Quiñonez, who aspires for Independientes; Juan Torres, a metallurgical engineer endorsed by the Ecologist Party; and José Domingo Cortés, from Nueva Fuerza Democrática.

The mayoralty is also disputed

Hernández’s role in the mayoral race endorses his unpredictability. Four years ago he openly supported Juan Carlos Cárdenas to replace him and within a few months he became one of his biggest opponents, accusing him of corruption. Now the candidate who endorsed his party, the League of Anti-Corruption Governors, is Consuelo Ordóñez, with whom he crossed strong accusations in the past.

“She (Ordóñez) keeps saying that I am inept and has used her power in the Attorney General’s Office to criticize what the mayor has and does not have to do,” Hernández declared on the Blu Radio microphones in 2017. He affirmed that the animosity it was because, as mayor, he had stopped hiring an insurance intermediary that Ordóñez’s husband managed. Six years later, as confirmed by Ordóñez to EL PAÍS, the engineer decided to support her with the only commitment that she “undertake not to steal”, without even a programmatic agreement. Ordóñez is an economist, she was manager of the Bucaramanga Cleaning Company, Santander Planning Secretary during Horacio Serpa’s term and is the only woman who aspires to the Mayor’s Office.

He confronts the son of his former boss, Horacio José Serpa, the Liberal Party’s bid to recover the Mayor’s Office that he managed until 2015, when Rodolfo Hernández was elected. Although Serpa Jr. was born in Barrancabermeja 41 years ago, his career has taken place outside the department, which arouses recriminations among the most regionalists. He served as a Bogotá councilor between 2012 and 2017, when he resigned to run for the Senate, where he was between 2018 and 2022. His main letter of introduction is also his biggest critic: his father, who was a parliamentarian, minister, candidate for the Presidency in 1998, 2002 and 2006, and Governor of Santander.

The other two candidates with the greatest visibility are former councilors Carlos Parra and Jaime Beltrán. The first is close to the green senator Angélica Lozano and the mayoress of Bogotá, Claudia López. The lawyer from the Universidad del Rosario came to the Council after being the most voted in 2019, initially supported the mayor, but finally made a name for himself thanks to his role as an opponent. The second, who with 40,067 votes ranked second in the mayoral vote in 2019, is a Christian pastor and politician, and has been on the Council since 2012. Without a specific position on the ideological spectrum, he has the ability to build bridges with different sectors. His biggest weakness for now is that his party, the Christian Colombia Justa Libres, faces a legal fight that could invalidate all his endorsements.

Among the other 13 applicants are Manuel Parada, who won the endorsement of Creemos, the movement of Federico Gutiérrez; Jaime Calderón, doctor and former columnist for Vanguardia, for the Historical Pact; and Jorge Figueroa, former Secretary of Social Development of Bucaramanga, endorsed by the Colombian Democratic Party. They all have something to say about Rodolfo Hernández. Whether for or against him, no one is indifferent to the political phenomenon that he personified and that can still set the tone for voting in Santander. The regional elections will be a measure of that, a referendum on whether the engineer continues to be a prophet, at least in his land.

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