“President Petro, do not punish us for representing the opposition: it is a serious mistake. Medellín and Antioquia are Colombia,” said the mayor of Colombia's second city at the inauguration ceremony this Monday, January 1. Frederick Fico Gutiérrez thus sent a message that was echoed by the governor who took office that same day, Andrés Julián Rendón. The new president challenged the national government in his own words: “If they don't support Antioquia, at least let them work.” Thus, from their first moment in power, the new duo of rulers made it clear that the richest and most populated department in Colombia, or at least those who currently run their governments, will be a counterweight to Gustavo Petro.
The posture is not surprising. Gutiérrez and Rendón come from the right, while Petro is the first left-wing president of contemporary Colombia. Fico, a Medellin politician who has had the luxury of being close to former President Álvaro Uribe without ever having joined his party, the Democratic Center, and having won the Mayor's Office in 2015 from the candidate of that group, was the candidate of the right. in the 2022 presidential elections. Uribe and his forces supported him, and Gutiérrez campaigned showing himself as the antidote to what seemed (and was) a victory for Petro.
His position is radical: he denounced Petro for alleged setups against him in 2022 and for illegal financing of the campaign in 2023, after the scandal led by the president's first-born son, Nicolás Petro. He rode without problems to his reelection as mayor last October thanks to the fact that this rejection of the Government is strong in his city and the bad image of Daniel Quintero, the local leader who had alienated himself with the president.
Rendón, a lesser-known figure outside Antioquia, won the Governorship with the endorsement of the Democratic Center. He was mayor of Rionegro, a wealthy municipality neighboring Medellín where Uribe lives and which is home to the international airport, when Fico was mayor in the capital. They made a formula for the regional elections last October, in which the current governor accused the president of being an enemy of the department. “From Antioquia we will face a Petro who hates the Antioquia people”, “Antioqueños, your love and your vote will help us block Petro”, “It is Petro or it is Antioquia”, were some of the phrases with which he made campaign in streets, social networks and media.
In the first days of his mandate, two issues have materialized the distance, and in both Rendón has made his demands clear. The first is that the department wants to be the mining authority in its territory, in charge of delivering or removing the titles required to open a mine and supervising an activity that has deep historical roots in a region that lived off gold extraction for the colonial centuries, and which is the largest exporter of the metal.
On December 26, the Government decided not to renew that delegation, which would have been extended since 2013, which sparked annoyance in the region. “It is a demonstration of revenge towards Antioquia,” said the outgoing governor, Aníbal Gaviria, at that time. Rendón took a step further: “I have decided to form a legal team of the highest level to fight, from an administrative and constitutional point of view, to recover the mining delegation of Antioquia,” he announced on the day of his inauguration.
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Petro has supported his decision with legal arguments, but also with policy positions that deepen the distance between the leaders. “My dear governor, mining in Antioquia has largely been dominated by armed groups and, on the other hand, has spread to areas of fertile land and high environmental sensitivity. It doesn't seem like a good balance to me. “I propose to promote a mining model that prioritizes the small miner and I propose that agricultural areas be respected in their agricultural vocation,” he said the day after the debate broke out.
It is precisely a fight that has also begun to take place on the second issue, that of the works on fourth-generation road concessions, or 4G roads. Structured by the Administration of Juan Manuel Santos about a decade ago in different regions, they have special importance in a department so steep that its capital, Medellín, is known as The Capital of the Mountain. In fact, 4G was built from a previous project, left by the Uribe Government, to build several roads in Antioquia known as Autopistas de la Montaña. Santos took up the idea, changed the name, added roads to other regions and, with environmental, financial and legal adjustments, took 4G forward.
In Antioquia, several of them have sections or works pending, and the department has asked the Government for additional money to finance them. The answer has been negative. “We have a financing problem, but not with the 4G in Antioquia, but with the roads in Colombia,” the Minister of Transportation, William Camargo, told EL PAÍS in October. He explained that these are additional works that have been proposed by the companies in charge of the construction and maintenance of the roads, or by the communities, and that there is no money for it. “It cannot be argued that Antioquia has not received resources: of the 50 billion in fourth generation concessions, approximately 28 billion are materialized in concessions that pass through that department, and another four pass through a little side,” the manager argued at the time.
Rendón brought up the matter on the day of his inauguration. “If they don't want to finish the Mountain Highways, let them hand them over to us because we will finish them here,” he stated at the ceremony. “Petro's hatred towards Antioquia is limitless: he took the money from us to finish the 4G roads,” he had said during the campaign. Fico, although he has not commented directly on the two issues, has accused Petro of punishing a region that did not vote for him in the presidential elections and now elected opponents. “Attacking a region due to political and ideological differences with its leaders is an attack on the unity of the country,” he said the day the Government's decision on mining was known.
The fight is on. More issues emerge, such as the intervention that the Government made to SaviaSalud, the health promotion entity (EPS) owned by Medellín and Antioquia; Petro's criticism of the Hidroituango hydroelectric plant, another department and municipality megaproject; and the distances of the governor and the mayor regarding flagship policies of the Executive, from health reform to total peace.
Located at the ideological antipodes of Petro, with resources to carry out their administrations without depending to a large extent on the Government and being in the region where the president is doing worst in the polls, Fico and Rendón have the incentives aligned so that be a notorious counterweight to the Executive. And, with an opposition without a visible head, they have room to be noticed.
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