Wednesday, June 08, 2022

THE RULING CLASS FEAR

Millionaire presidential candidate wary of class war in Colombia

AFP - Yesterday 
© Raul ARBOLEDA

Rodolfo Hernandez, a millionaire businessman and ex-mayor under investigation for corruption, has made poverty and government graft the focus of his campaign for the Colombian presidency.

Hernandez, 77, finished in a surprise second place in a first election round on May 29 and will face leftist former Bogota mayor Gustavo Petro in a runoff on June 19.

At a meeting last week with fellow businessmen in the northeastern city of Bucaramanga, his political stronghold, Hernandez warned that growing inequality could lead to a class war in Colombia.

"If these guys (the poor) one day decide to come for us, there won't be enough trees to hang us from," he told industrial-scale palm growers.

"We need to live as brothers. I am not saying equals, because that we will never be, it is impossible. But yes, we must improve the lot of the poor," he said.

Poverty affects nearly 40 percent of Colombia's 50 million people, who largely blame corruption and nepotism for their plight.

In an interview after the meeting, Hernandez told AFP how he sees the problem and what he intends to do about it with his small Anti-Corruption League party holding only two seats on Colombia's near 300-member Congress.

Q: Is there a class struggle in Colombia?

A: "There is no class struggle, but there could be one.

"In a country where 22 million of our 50 million people live in conditions of poverty and extreme misery, it would not be strange for any given political activist to foment a revolt rather than think about how to bring those 22 million into the economic fold. "

Q: How can it be avoided?

A: "By getting politicians to stop stealing. While people pay taxes (politicians) are increasing the country's debt, doing tax reforms and not solving the problems.

"It means these political administrators must be expelled and imports must be reduced in favor of (domestic) job creation...

"Everything is about (global) competitiveness and that is what we have to do. We have the water, we have the people, we have everything, but these politicians don't give them the chance."

Q: Your rival has also proposed limiting imports. What makes you the man to do it?

A: "The others (politicians) have not worked. When have you ever seen a politician working, producing? The politician is fixated on the payroll, applying a form of bureaucracy called nepotism. That is what has destroyed us. I want to make one proviso: Not all politicians are bad, but almost all."

Q: In your opinion, what caused last year's anti-government protests?

A: "This is not a class struggle but about politicians ignoring the demands of the people. What did the people in Cali ask for? Free, high-quality education and jobs. The government did not listen and was pushed until it all exploded and 100 people died.

"In the end, the president agreed to everything they had asked for, but too late. Why did we not act beforehand? It's like in football: anticipation. The government has to anticipate problems, not wait for them to hatch, because then it hits out, and people die."

(Note: According to the UN, 46 people died during the protests, 28 at the hands of the security forces.)

Q: What will you do if you cannot pass laws through Congress?

A: "That is not important as long as we have public opinion... A democratic debate, that is what we need. No violence, only reason and the law. Politicians who feel watched by citizens will approve everything, they are cowards."

Hernandez: Colombia's Anti-graft Candidate With A Checkered Past

By AFP News
06/08/22

In October 2015, volunteers flooded an impoverished neighborhood of Bucaramanga in northeast Colombia with thousands of pamphlets promising free houses if Rodolfo Hernandez, a millionnaire engineer, were elected mayor.

He won the election, but the free houses never came. Now, Hernandez is running for his country's top job.

"Rodolfo came here with pure lies. And now he wants to be president?" said Paulina Figueroa, a housewife in the targeted neighborhood, El Pablon, shaking her head.

She still holds on to Hernandez's pamphlet, but told AFP that instead of getting a house, she had to take out a loan, which she pays off with half her meager monthly income, to build herself a shack of wood and zinc.

"Just another unfulfilled promise by a cheap politician," added 57-year-old community leader Jaime Nunez, who received the same flyer and voted for Hernandez but continues to pay rent for squalid, crowded lodgings.

Despite failing to deliver on his ambitious promise, Hernandez remains popular among many in Bucaramanga, admired for his brashness and for building sports stadiums in poor areas during his 2016-2019 term.



Rodolfo Hernandez is a millionnaire engineer and former mayor 
Photo: AFP / Raul ARBOLEDA

He donated his mayoral salary to social causes and lived from his self-stated fortune of $100 million.

Hernandez was suspended as mayor for intervening in local elections, and resigned shortly before the end of his term.


In the rest of the country, he is known for another act as mayor: slapping an opposition councilman during a disagreement on camera.

Photos of a smiling Hernandez adorn many walls, cars and even restaurants in Bucaramanga.

Paulina Figueroa said she was promised a free house, but had to take out a loan to build one instead
 Photo: AFP / Raul ARBOLEDA

"Rodolfo faced a corrupt political class that had practically enslaved the city, and defeated it. That's why people love him," said Felix Jaimes, a fellow engineer who was Hernandez's mayoral adviser.

When Hernandez won the mayorship, he unseated a political class that had governed for decades with his anti-elite stance and promises of social upliftment.

He now aims to do the same with the Colombian presidency.

Hernandez, who goes by the moniker "The Engineer," made a surprise second-place finish in a first round of voting on May 29.

He will face leftist Gustavo Petro in a runoff on June 19.

Opinion polls show a tie between the two men, despite Petro having been by far the favorite ahead of the first round and Hernandez a distant third.

Rodolfo Hernandez, 77, has 600,000 followers on TikTok
 Photo: AFP / Juan BARRETO

Jaimes claimed the Bucaramanga city council, where Hernandez had no political majority, blocked his plan to deliver 20,000 free homes.

But not everyone is convinced about The Engineer's good intentions.

In a folder, retired army sergeant Saul Ortiz carries evidence of what he calls a "scam" against hundreds of military families who bought into a housing construction project run by a Hernandez company, before he was mayor.


Ortiz told AFP that in 1995, he began to pay off a house in Bucaramanga, but claimed that over time, the company charged him about 30 percent more than the initial price.

"The majority of homeowners lost their homes as they were unable to pay this overcharge," he said.


Ortiz said he was one of a few to obtain relief from the courts and get the excess payments back. He showed AFP documents backing his claims.

But his house flooded in 2005, the project having been constructed too close to the riverbed, he said -- another allegation for which he holds documented proof.

"The neighborhood was completely flooded, there was tons of mud, cars were damaged; people lost everything... they did not compensate us," he said.

Containment walls are now being constructed at the state's expense.

Hernandez "is not who he claims to be... he is just another corrupt politician, one of those who have Colombia mired in poverty," said Ortiz


Hernandez has focused his campaign largely on combating poverty, which affects some 39 percent of Colombia's 50 million people.

He has vowed not to raise taxes, to cut VAT from 19 to 10 percent and to boost social spending by shrinking bureaucracy.

Hernandez blames government corruption for much of Colombia's deep-seated economic inequality, but is himself under investigation for "undue benefits" given to third parties when he was mayor.

Despite his checkered past, Hernandez appears to have a real shot at the presidency, with traditional parties throwing their weight behind him to defeat Petro in a country deeply suspicious of the political left.

Unlike Petro, Hernandez has made no campaign tours and gives no public speeches.

Instead, the self-proclaimed "King of TikTok" speaks directly to his electorate via the social media platform -- where he has almost 600,000 followers -- and Facebook broadcasts.

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