Rodolfo Hernández breaks down in tears minutes before being convicted of corruption: “I have terminal cancer” | THE COUNTRY America Colombia
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The scene occurred during the hearing in which the former presidential candidate was sentenced for the crime of undue interest in the execution of contracts.
Rodolfo Hernández cries during the hearing.
Life is slipping away from Rodolfo Hernández. The septuagenarian engineer, who was Gustavo Petro’s rival in the second round of the last presidential elections after running a hearty campaign, burst into tears during the virtual hearing in which the Colombian justice system defined whether it would convict him for corruption crimes. After taking the floor and thanking the judge for allowing him to be treated by a doctor, which led to delaying the procedure, his voice broke and his expression anticipated the painful revelation. “I have terminal cancer. I thought about everything, except ending up prosecuted for things that I didn’t do.” After a brief recess, the judge read the decision: the Santander politician was found guilty. The decision is of first instance and can be appealed.
RODOLFO HERNANDEZ – CRY IN HEARING
n “}},”video_agency”:false,”alt_image”:”RODOLFO HERNANDEZ – CRYES IN AUDIENCE”},”url”:” HERNANDEZ – CRYES IN AUDIENCE”}); The moment when Rodolfo Hernández breaks down in tears during the audience.Video: W RADIO
The events for which he is convicted date back to his time as mayor of Bucaramanga, the capital of the department of Santander, between 2016 and 2019. His Administration opened a tender to choose a consultant in charge of evaluating the viability of converting the city’s garbage in energy. Among those interested was Vitalogic, a company dedicated to solid waste management. The company had entered into an agreement with one of Hernández’s sons, Luis Carlos, as a lobbyist, and agreed to give him a commission if he obtained the business. Since then, the former mayor denies that he was aware of his son’s actions. He has also claimed that he did not exert any pressure for Vitalogic to benefit, but the evidence presented by the Prosecutor’s Office, including screenshots of WhatsApp conversations, convinced the judge. In the coming days the penalty that will be imposed on the engineer will be known.
Hernández, who had made a career as a businessman and state contractor, became mayor after winning elections in which his candidacy seemed unviable. Not even he trusted his chances and traveled abroad before the results were known. He found out about the win a day later. It didn’t take long for his popularity to take off. Thanks to his radical anti-corruption speech and his unusual self-confidence, which contrasted with the ways of traditional political leaders, he attracted the attention of public opinion. Excusing himself as an outsider outside power—not entirely true because he financed electoral aspirations before becoming mayor and had been close to the local political class for decades—he made multiple outbursts. Paradoxically, he always landed standing.
His fan base increased despite—or because of—cameras recording him questioning firefighters for being “fat, lazy, and potbellied”; promising illegal transporters to “play dumb and not send them to the Police”; and even slapping an opposition councilor on a live broadcast. Comparisons with Donald Trump soon appeared, in part when seeing that support increased in tandem with his legal troubles. The Attorney General’s Office opened various disciplinary cases against him, finding him guilty, and Hernández paid little attention to him. He used any sanction to his advantage. Anticipating one of them, he resigned when he was just a few months away from finishing his term as mayor to campaign for his anointed successor, and denounced that he was the victim of political persecution. Leaving his duties was not a disadvantage: 84% of Bumangueses approved his incomplete management and his candidate was elected.
The following two years served to prepare the ground for his future aspirations. He dismissed the investigation into the Vitalogic case in the media, calling it fictitious, and said that he wanted to be president. His ideological ambiguity was favorable to him. As in his previous candidacy in Bucaramanga, he started low in the polls and his numbers improved as the elections approached. At first he launched recriminations at the Government of Iván Duque and admitted that he would vote for Gustavo Petro if he did not go to the second round. He soon left those statements behind. The lack of a charismatic candidate in the right-wing parties – Uribismo did not bring its own candidate and then supported Federico Gutiérrez, who failed to consolidate – made him the only one capable of preventing a victory for the left. Those who previously rejected him because of his sympathies with Petro embraced him; Those who previously asked him to join the current president repudiated him.
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The 5.9 million votes he received in the first round, surpassed only by Petro’s 8.5 million, were the prelude to Hernández’s decline. While everyone expected him to double his efforts for the second round, taking advantage of the fact that different sectors sought him out to form alliances, he took a plane to his mansion in Miami and did not campaign. It is still unclear why he took that evasive stance, although he has argued that he did it because he was going to be assassinated. “They are trying to kill me with a knife,” he said from the state of Florida. His subsequent defeat was no surprise.
In June 2022, a month after the votes, he met with Petro. On his social networks he published a photo of a tight hug between the two, accompanied by a wink to the president-elect: “The change has begun.” The event was received as a betrayal by many of his voters, the first step in a disconnection that would grow. Colombian laws determine that the second in an election has the right to be invested as a senator to exercise the opposition. Hernández accepted, taking office in July of that year, but resigned in October stating that his stay in the Legislature was equivalent to “having Messi as a goalkeeper.” From that short period there was no initiative left to show.
The political knockout came with his failed aspiration for the Governorship of Santander, in the 2023 regional elections. The National Electoral Council (CNE) revoked his candidacy after confirming that he was disqualified from competing, since the Attorney General’s Office had disciplined him in three occasions. Hernández insisted on his social networks that this impediment was false and invited people to support him. Although the votes he received were invalid, he came in fourth in the count. It was his farewell to public life. Today’s sentence, which may be reviewed in the second instance, is probably the closing of his fleeting career. He was close to achieving the highest honor and reaching the Presidency, but ended up with judicial problems and advanced colon cancer.
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