Rodolfo Hernández was one of the most voted candidates in the history of Colombia, with 10 million votes in the second presidential round last June. He failed to defeat the current president, Gustavo Petro, but the Statute of the Opposition in Colombian law gave him, and his vice-presidential formula Marelen Castillo, a seat in the Senate and another in the House of Representatives. Hernández has been in office for two months as a Senator, the first time in the legislature for this 77-year-old former mayor of the city of Bucaramanga. But this morning he announced, at a meeting of Congress, that he will soon submit his resignation. He considers that the legislature, as several local media reported, is not worthy of a man like him. “It’s like having Lionel Messi as a goalkeeper,” the politician said at the meeting, comparing himself to the player with seven Ballon d’Ors.
Hernández does not understand himself as a man of debate and consensus, as is needed in the legislature. “I don’t feel comfortable in Congress,” he told Caracol Radio a month ago. “The most valuable thing is actions and not gossip”, said today in his resignation statement. Between the first and second presidential rounds he refused to debate with Petro, despite the fact that a judicial ruling forced him to do so. And since he came to Congress he has not been one of the heads of the opposition and, apart from some anti-corruption speeches that marked his campaign (he did not accept the vans or the cell phone that all congressmen receive), he has not been able to reach consensus among politicians from opposition to stop Gustavo Petro’s reforms.
His thing is more unilateral execution, like that of the CEO of a company—Hernández made a great fortune, before launching himself into politics, as the owner of a construction company. “I am a civil engineer, I am in the field of doing, building, planning, budgeting, reviewing, that is my environment,” he told the media. His resignation seeks to prepare his candidacy for next year’s local elections. Governorships, mayors, assemblies and municipal councils will be elected in October 2023—and Hernández is interested in winning the elections for the governorship of Santander, his department, in addition to launching several candidates from his party for local positions.
His new movement, the League of Anti-Corruption Leaders, is for now an extension of Hernández rather than a diverse community: it has the former candidate as founder and director for an indefinite period, and his wife, son and other trusted people on the steering committee. Since he lost the presidential elections in June, Hernández has called on citizens, through social networks, to send their resumes digitally to the party’s page so that he (and his trusted group) can decide on the endorsements for the elections.
The Statute of the Opposition was a reform of 2018, so there are few politicians who have been able to have a seat in the legislature by coming in second place after an election. But Hernández’s attitude contrasts with that of Petro in 2018, when he lost the presidential elections in second place, but he knew how to take advantage of the Senate platform to oppose the government of Iván Duque for four years. Another example was that of Carlos Fernando Galán, a liberal politician who ran for mayor of Bogotá in 2019, came in second place, but agreed to be an opposition in the Bogotá Council. Like Hernández, Galán also resigned from his chair, in 2021, but not after two months in office but after two years as a councilman. He did it, like Hernández, to be able to run again for a popularly elected position. In the case of Galán, he resigned from the council to run as a candidate for Congress in the legislative elections in March this year, with the reborn New Liberalism party, but he was not elected.
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