Manuel Rodríguez Becerra He confesses that, despite having supported Sergio Fajardo as an advisor in all his campaigns, this time he left to support Paloma, because Fajardo did not want to enter La Gran Consulta, ‘a new way of doing politics.’
Doctor Manuel Rodríguez, were you working on Sergio Fajardo’s campaign?
Several times, in all the campaigns, even at the dawn of this one, because I admire Sergio, he was a great mayor of Medellín and a great governor. It seems to me that your proposals are reasonable.
So, what happened to him electorally, at least until now?
Sergio has used a strategy, from my point of view, that is erroneous. I think not having participated in The Great Consultation was a huge mistake because surely, among all the candidates, he was the one who had the most chance. There we see the results in the latest polls: he with around 3, maximum 5%, and he also refused to participate in a new way of doing politics in Colombia: the one that was proposed in that Great Consultation, in which there were people with enormous experience, with successes and all kinds of nuances, some, let’s say, with more achievements in their lives than Fajardo. We must remember Mauricio Cárdenas, or Enrique Peñalosa, or Aníbal Gaviria, etc. And there is the Oviedo case, supremely interesting, a man with a lot of charisma, also with a new way of doing politics.
So, do you believe that Paloma and Oviedo embody this new way of doing politics?
What is taking shape in Colombia is that idea, now led by Paloma and Oviedo, of saying ‘let’s add up’ and resolve the differences, but let’s add up and thus we will have a better country. Paloma has also been involved in a new way of doing politics; I don’t think Paloma had thought of that four months ago, nor, four months ago, did she have any chance, she didn’t appear anywhere.
But did he go all out and go through the right door?
That’s how it is. In addition, the others in La Gran Consulta also left their egos aside, similar to Fajardo’s, even superior (laughs). But I think that now the champion is Fajardo, always so stubborn; It is an absurdity that clearly puts us all in danger of Cepeda being the new president.
You are clearly saying to Fajardo: ‘Please leave.’ He is not asking him to support Paloma, but to let his voters go free…
As is. Withdraw, and why not, even join, because you are making it easier for Cepeda to win the elections.
What was the position you held in Fajardo’s campaign?
I was a member of the Environment Programmatic Committee, in their campaigns I have worked on their program, but now I am obviously in Paloma’s.
You were the first and a formidable Minister of the Environment. It has its own specific weight. I remember that he took us to the then QAP news program the images of the very savage deforestation that has been taking place in the Amazon. It tore your soul apart. You have the authority to recommend that Colombians vote for
I have been criticized. I have been told I have a conflict of interest. There I must admit that, naively, I thought that a very good part of the population knew that I was the father of Tomás Rodríguez Barraquer, Paloma’s husband. In fact, many of those who have intervened in this entire controversy knew it.
Starting, of course, with Sergio Fajardo…
Yes. Then later some said that they didn’t know and that I should have warned. I agreed. I even put a sign on my Twitter (X) that says: “Father-in-law of Paloma Valencia”, which a couple of tweeters suggested to me. Also my daughter. That sign is going to be there for at least 10 weeks.
Just because he is Paloma’s father-in-law, he does not lose his right to give his opinion…
The constitutional and legal rights that I have allow me to support any candidate. I have the freedom to do it. Also, I know my daughter-in-law very well.
If you were not Paloma’s father-in-law, would you have stayed at Fajardo’s?
No, because he didn’t enter The Great Consultation, which seemed like a great idea to me. And when Paloma arrived at that electoral process, I never imagined that she was going to win; He entered with a very similar percentage to that of other candidates. I think that The Great Consultation was fundamental as a new way of doing politics and defeating the extreme left, which is doing a lot of damage to this country.
Tomás Rodríguez Barraquer and Paloma Valencia. Photo:Social networks
Tell me what you like about Paloma, you who have experienced it in the intimacy of your family; who knows how he participates in, let’s say, private discussions, and what he thinks about things. What is your character like? Do you think your proposals would help the country?
I talk a lot with Paloma, as is obvious at family gatherings, on weekends when we are together, and the first thing I must say is that she is a person who argues and likes debate, she likes to exchange points of view and listen.
And he is very brave, undoubtedly.
So, I have argued with her on many topics. And my son is also very independent, a great intellectual, not just a great economist; He has every title imaginable: PhD from Stanford, mathematician from Oxford, etcetera, etcetera. But he is also an intellectual in the sense that he is interested in many topics, and so I know that he, without a doubt, has helped Paloma a lot to understand different types of problems, I imagine that even to change her position on some topics; Obviously, he writes documents and does so with a very low profile…
Of course, he never shows up…
And I and Paloma, well, I have had an agreement for many years on the environmental issue. On social networks they say that this candidacy belongs to Uribism, which is anti-environmental and such. Paloma, since she has been a senator, has presented key projects for the environment, which I have known about from the beginning. Look, for example, the 5% of total royalties now dedicated to the environmental sector, of which I had never received anything. And 20% of the carbon tax allocated to the Amazon region. And in her first professional interventions, at that time she was not even Tomás’ girlfriend, several times I visited her at the Environmental Comptroller’s Office, where she had a very complicated issue, which was the illegal extraction of wood in Chocó and in the Katíos park; She had to investigate it, verify it or try it, and that also led her to do some environmental studies at Harvard. He took many courses on the subject, and since then we have shared a lot. With Paloma I had the opportunity to discuss, alongside Mario Laserna (founder of the Universidad de los Andes, her grandfather), about many topics; I was a good friend of Mario…
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A very visionary man…
He loved controversy, he also helped Paloma train, there is no doubt in my mind. How it helped me; Mario gave me many lessons in life, for example, he was the first person who ever talked to me about ecology. Now, Paloma is clearly raising a lot about the issue in his duo with Oviedo, despite the brutal attacks against him.
From there, notice that a very nice motto came out, which is: ‘We are not equal, but that does not mean that we cannot agree on many things.’
Which is again like the idea of addition, right? Oviedo, well obviously he has a great capacity to contribute to it, he is a different man, a great statistician, we cannot forget that he was director of Dane, for example.
From that point of view, there is a man that I admire a lot, who is Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo, and it would have been a great acquisition to get him back for Congress. Fajardo’s good battle companion, but he launched a very tough column against Oviedo, accusing him of being in the shadow of María del Rosario Guerra, and, well, a number of things… Does that disqualify Oviedo from being vice president?
No, I don’t think so. He worked for a while with Senator Guerra, she helped him a lot to advance his studies and that kind of things…
Oviedo, without a doubt, is a very prepared guy.
I also admire Robledo a lot, but, of course, this is one of the impediments for Fajardo to withdraw his candidacy.
Why do you believe?
Fajardo’s position leads to Cepeda’s victory, then I don’t understand it, because Robledo is a very intelligent man.
Former Minister of the Environment and EL TIEMPO columnist, Manuel Rodríguez Becerra. Photo:Private file
Unless it is out of simple loyalty to Fajardo… Does he have, out of curiosity, any interesting environmental proposals? Since you passed by there…
Yes, it has them. I started working on the programmatic committee, but I left and I don’t know what the proposal turned out to be. He is aware of the issue, he handles it, he even once invited me to Medellín to give a presentation on a book that I wrote. He is a person aware of the importance of the environmental issue on the country’s agenda.
And finally, how are you seeing the electoral race?
Well, I am an optimist. Now, that is going to be difficult, but I believe that Paloma goes to the second round, which is going to be very difficult because we are seeing a president of the Republic, the head of state, dedicated to the campaign.
There are very complicated points, such as the suspicion, raised by Roy Barreras himself, who was his ambassador in London and today a presidential candidate, that all these suspensions of arrest warrants for the most terrible common bandits in the battered Antioquia are due to the fact that the Government plans to influence the vote. Very serious.
There are already 150 municipalities where the ‘total peace’, directed and led by Cepeda, has failed, and there is a very great concern because there are 150 municipalities in the hands of people who have been led by Cepeda, and who have been appointed peace managers, a figure that has its greatest expression of failure in the case of ‘Calarcá’…
And now, in the party at the Itagüí prison. With the years that we have been alive, do you remember any president who has been so active in a partisan campaign? Because all the sitting presidents, well, have had their candidate…
But what? A president acting like this?
Yes, that he used the State to campaign for a candidate in the race… Do you remember something similar?
No never. Obviously we have always known the president’s preference, and normally the president has been head of the political group, etc., or of the political party. And we are almost seven weeks away, or less than seven weeks away… And the parties’ accessions are missing; We hope that the Liberal Party joins, the same as the Conservative Party, hopefully also Radical Change, because without a doubt, that would be a great boost for Paloma. These parties, even if they are in decline, when they are agitated, they work.
MARÍA ISABEL RUEDA
Special for EL TIEMPO
