Who is Fico Gutiérrez, the right-wing candidate who seeks to prevent the left from coming to power in Colombia

Under the spotlight of the cameras, the then mayor of Medellín hunted criminals live and direct. six years later, Federico Gutierrez running for president of Colombia with a fresh image and safety flags held high.

January 2017. Three motorcyclists assault a vehicle in Medellín, the second largest city in the country. His representative, known as “phyco”, undertakes a fierce chase to capture them while publishing the step by step on social networks.

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“The only option is to grab these three cowards,” warned Gutierrez.

The next day he gave a victory report surrounded by police: “After more than 20 hours of operations we captured [a los] responsible,” he said.

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The scene was repeated on a loop throughout his mayoralty (2016-2019) with chases of criminals, arrests and publicity.

With a relaxed appearance, jeans, casual shoes, long hair down to the nape of the neck and colloquial speech, the 47-year-old civil engineer presents himself as the “people’s” candidate.

A billboard with electoral propaganda for Colombian presidential candidate Federico Gutiérrez is seen in Cali, Colombia, on May 23, 2022. (Raul ARBOLEDA / AFP)

All the polls show him as second in voting intention for the presidential elections on May 29, behind the senator and former guerrilla Gustavo Petro.

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If no candidate reaches more than 50% of the support, a ballot on June 19 will define the replacement of President Iván Duque, who cannot be re-elected by law.

Father of two children and trained in an Opus Dei school, Gutiérrez is the youngest of the range of presidential candidates.

“Uribe 2.0”

Winner of a coalition of right-wing forces in the primaries on March 13, Gutierrez promises a strong hand against rebels and drug armies that persist in the prolonged Colombian conflict after the signing of the peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas in 2016.

There must be “a strong state against criminal structures,” said the former mayor in an interview with AFP on May 18.

Although he marked distance with the ruling party, Gutierrez contains a speech similar to the one that brought Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) to power, promoter of the current President Duque and an influential politician who won much of his acceptance with a strategy of merciless struggle against leftist guerrillas.

Colombian presidential candidate Federico “Fico” Gutiérrez, of the Equipo por Colombia coalition, speaks during his campaign closing event in Medellín. (EFE/ Luis Eduardo Noriega A.).

Gutierrez “tries to be a 2.0 version of Uribe”, born in the same city, with a personality of “greeting everyone by name, generating empathy”, “showing that he is on the scene”, “tips” that he was given “very successful” to the former president, Andrés Ávila, a political scientist at the Javeriana University, explains to AFP.

And although “Fico” defines himself as the antipodes of Petro, he fails to “establish a good point of differentiation and it is very difficult to decipher” his speech beyond “respect for private property” and security, according to the expert.

“Fico-show”

Very active on social networks, as a leader of Medellín, he implemented an ambitious communication campaign that highlighted his self-confidence and closeness to the people.

According to the Foundation for Freedom of the Press, this “advertising strategy” cost at least 38 million dollars, the highest spending on image of all mayors in the country between 2016 and 2017.

Every Tuesday at 8:00 p.m. he dressed as a television presenter and directed the public broadcast “Federico counts on you”.

“Anyone arrives here, approaches, asks,” he said in one of the programs with an informal vendor.

Sometimes he rode alongside famous cyclists or ran marathons.

But Luz María Múnera, an opposition councilor from Medellín at the time, points out that the so-called “Fico-show” basically hid “inexperience.”

He is “a person with two personalities,” he told AFP. One in which “he handles the image very well, the networks, that he wants to make himself look like the cool (pleasant)” and another in which “he believes that society has to be obedient, almost uniformed.”

Despite the criticism, he ended his government as the most popular mayor in the country with almost 85% approval.

Supporters of Colombian presidential candidate for the Equipo Colombia coalition, Federico Gutiérrez, attend a campaign rally in Armenia, Colombia, on May 14, 2022. (Juan BARRETO / AFP)

“Jail or grave”

Commanding the old fort of Pablo Escobar, the dejected cocaine baron, Gutierrez a frontal combat against the mafias was proposed.

But in 2017 the arrest of his Secretary of Security, Gustavo Villegas, raised doubts. The official was accused of giving information to illegal organizations about ongoing operations and allying himself with the Oficina de Envigado, a powerful gang that inherited the Escobar cartel after his death in 1993.

Villegas reached an agreement with the prosecution and was convicted of failing to report extortion. Gutierrez denies the accusations.

For Dávila, the former mayor faces a “very difficult challenge: to be Uribe’s candidate without being noticed and without having to bear the inevitable wear and tear of the Duque government.”

Nice with people Gutierrez He is ruthless with violence.

At the beginning of 2022 Gutierrez visited Arauca, on the convulsive border with Venezuela, and warned: “Bandits in jail or in the grave.”

Source: Elcomercio