Rodolfo Hernández was the protagonist of the first round of elections in Colombia. He has risen in the polls in recent weeks, overthrowing the candidate of the governing and right-wing system – Federico “Fico” Gutiérrez – and has reached the second round with the possibility of threatening Gustavo Petro’s lead. His flag is anti-corruption. He is independent, controversial, anti-political and populist.
These are the main proposals of Rodolfo Hernández, 77, if he wins the presidency.
1- Anti-corruption
“I define myself as Rodolfo Hernández, an engineer who wants to take the thieves out of the government. Only that”. That’s what his campaign to end the corrupt in general boils down to. That’s the backbone of his show.
“Corruption is the biggest tax that all Colombians have to pay,” says Hernández on his website. “Corruption is a disease that can only be cured with surgery and without anesthesia.”
How will you defeat corruption? “Not lying, not betraying voters and making a small modification to the Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code to remove their impunity,” he told CNN.
“How is it possible that these politicians who steal everything are sent to the country clubs? Send them home? They send them to do military service, while a poor man steals a chicken and puts him in the worst penitentiary for ten years”.
The anti-corruption axis includes the reform of the Judiciary, meritocracy as a basis for the attribution of public offices and the creation of fiscal control.
The bet is also on citizen participation. In his government program, Hernández says he will encourage citizen oversight: “They will receive a reward for the money recovered from the corrupt politicians they denounce. They will no longer be mistreated and their recommendations will have to be heeded promptly.”
In addition, he says he will create “a virtual institute that will return stolen money to Colombians”. “The idea is to reward citizen complaints with up to 20% of what is recovered.”
During the campaign, he accused his critics of being “scoundrels”, “burglars”, “thieves” and even drug addicts whenever possible.
Contrary to his flag, Hernández has an alleged corruption scandal behind him, in which he has pleaded not guilty.
This is the case of Vitalogic, in which the Public Ministry formally accused him in May 2021 of signing a consultancy contract with alleged irregularities to “implement new waste management technologies at the El Carrasco landfill”.
Hernández insists that “not a single coin” has ever been stolen.
In April 2022, at a procedural instruction hearing, Hernández did not accept accusations such as fraudulent misrepresentation, a contract without complying with legal requirements and an undue interest in entering into contracts, according to the Public Ministry. The case is still ongoing.
2- ‘Resocializing City’
In line with the fight against corruption, Rodolfo Hernández wants to restructure the National Penitentiary and Prison Institute (Inpec) “and improve the country’s prison infrastructure”. Its objective: to relocate prisons to places where there are “agricultural and industrial activities” and “zero tolerance for crime”.
It is what he calls the ‘Resocializing City’: a project to modify prisons with “resource optimization and resocialization of inmates”.
3- More coverage in education
Hernández has a central educational proposal: 100% university coverage, through a reform of the admissions system in public universities.
“To achieve this objective, investment will be made in the construction of more centers of higher education, starting from the most remote and poorest regions of the country”, says its program.
Hernández says that transfers to universities will be increased and there will be a rule that allows territorial entities “to use royalties to finance the payment of professors and tuition subsidies for students”.
One axis is the progressive amortization of student debts with the Colombian Institute of Educational Credit and Technical Studies Abroad (Icetex), a state entity that promotes education through loans. Hernández proposes that it be applied with three filters: “Active students, to avoid desertion; those that are part of strata 1 and 2; and those who obtain the best averages”.
One path in this project is for Hernández his anti-political vision: “To take the management of universities out of the hands of politicians to hand it over to the most renowned academics, intellectuals and thinkers”.
4- Taxes: 10% VAT
Rodolfo Hernández proposes to organize the country fiscally with one main bet: lowering VAT.
The idea is “to make the payment of VAT 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 the current percentage, which keeps the family shopping basket tax-free, and reclassify the other excluded goods and services.”
The objective is to guarantee collection and make administrative processes more efficient, if all taxpayers contribute 10% of VAT, he says, there would be balance in tax matters.
5- Decent housing to avoid displacement from the countryside
Hernández, who during his professional life was a builder focused on affordable housing in the Colombian department of Santander, says his goal is decent housing, closing “the housing deficit in rural and urban areas”.
The candidate proposes a national rural housing program with the creation of “integral rural villages”: prefabricated houses of at least 60 square meters with full housing services, solar panels and septic tanks.
This program, he says, manages to “avoid displacement to cities and, on the other hand, encourage a return to the countryside”.
As for urban housing, these would be houses on plots of 72 to 126 square meters in central areas, with investment savings incentives.
*With information from Fernando Ramos and Melissa Velásquez
Source: CNN Brasil
