Sergio Fajardo responded to the dilemma of how he would vote if the ‘candidate of Álvaro Uribe’ and Gustavo Petro faced each other in 2022

The journalists Daniel Coronell, Daniel Samper Sr. and Daniel Samper Jr., in the company of Cecilia Orozco, director of Noticias Uno, interviewed Sergio Fajardo this Sunday at noon, the politician who promises himself as a center option in the 2022 presidential elections.

The talk took place after the publication of Coronell’s documented column on the Los Danieles portal, where he points out that Fajardo was negligent, and on several occasions, in the face of the reported crisis in Hidroituango, which resulted in a fiscal emergency and detriment when he was Governor of Antioquia.

Towards the end of the interview, in which the case was discussed in detail, Fajardo was asked if in an eventual confrontation between ‘Uribe’s candidate’ and Petro he would go for Petro, to which the mathematician replied evasively . What he did make clear was that no alliance with the leader of Colombia Humana is among his plans.

“I do not make those assumptions Daniel, I do not start from those assumptions, there is still a long way to go and I have already expressed my position regarding Mr. Gustavo Petro”, he said in response.

Given Fajardo’s refusal to find himself in this hypothetical scenario, Coronell himself ‘threw himself into the water’ as an example to respond. “I tell you one thing. I voted blank and this is the time to say that, under those circumstances, I would not vote blank again, I would vote against Uribe. Would you vote for Uribe? ”Coronell asked, to which Fajardo replied: “I have not voted for Uribe and I am not going to vote for Uribe.”

The documents that entangle Fajardo for negligence

Regarding Coronell’s investigation, it is known that at the beginning of December 2020, the Comptroller General of the Nation charged 28 people as allegedly responsible in the Hidroituango case. On the list is the Former presidential candidate Sergio Fajardo, who was governor of Antioquia between 2008 and 2011, when the megaproject was formed. Although Fajardo has transferred responsibility to the delegate he assigned at the time, this Sunday, journalist Daniel Coronell published, on his Los Danieles website, documents that officials had brought to Fajardo, and assured that despite the fact that there is no evidence to incriminate him , it is evident that “there are serious indications about his negligent actions when he was governor of Antioquia in relation to the megaproject.”

In his research, the A journalist argues that there is material that supports Fajardo’s negligence during his administration in the department because “he delegated and did not control.” In addition, he says that there is a whole ‘arsenal’ of probative material that accuses him of knowing in advance the situation of the megaproject and not doing “Nothing to prevent it.”

Coronell assures that this accusation could truncate the presidential candidacy of Fajardo, who was third in the 2018 Colombian presidential elections. According to the latest polls, his name is on the first deck of options for those of 2022.

As a mitigating factor, the journalist says that a smear campaign against the former Antioquia governor was carried out on social networks to sell him as “the archetype of corruption”, but Coronell assures that despite the investigations carried out by the Comptroller’s Office on the project, Sergio Fajardo received no political or economic benefits from this tender. “He put his paws in, but not his hands,” Coronell noted.

Although he did not receive any kind of gift, he does show his negligence when delegating “In the manager of the Antioquia Development Institute, Idea, Iván Pérez Salazar, his participation in the board but did not control what his delegate did or did not do.”

At this point, the Los Danieles journalist explained one of the most critical points that would entangle Sergio Fajardo. Coronell assures that the Comptroller’s Office evidenced that the manager of the Antioquia institute “It did not recommend fining non-compliant contractors despite the delays of the work”, in addition, it ignored the warnings that the experts raised about “dispensing with the gates or building a third tunnel.”

There is no information that shows that Sergio Fajardo stopped the actions of delegate Pérez. Fajardo defended himself and appealed to an article of the Constitution in which it is ensured that governors can delegate those decisions to officials and “It exempts the delegate from responsibility, which will correspond exclusively to the delegate,” said the political leader in his response to the Comptroller’s Office.

Despite their arguments, the Comptroller’s Office, the Council of State and the Constitutional Court ruled that “Responsibility does not disappear with delegation”, what does that mean Sergio Fajardo must answer for the actions of his entrusted.

One of them warned him several times about the risk of the project. In a document accessed by Daniel Coronell, dated June 2013, Clara Luz Mejía Vélez, the Secretary of the Government of Fajardo when he was governor, sent a report that was endorsed by himself in which it was alerted -again- that the project “is overdue” and warned that “the diversion tunnel contractor is a disaster.”

Furthermore, in the document there would be a call to Sergio Fajardo warning that they were close to being sanctioned for environmental irregularities, due to bad maneuvers carried out by Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM).

“Epm says they could do it because it generated less environmental impact but the ANLA (National Environmental Licensing Authority) is upset (I think rightly so) because epm skipped them,” reads one of the sections cited by the independent journalist .

And the warnings to the one who was also mayor of Medellín did not stop there. Coronell’s investigation shows that Fajardo was also warned of the financial problems that would be triggered by the project because “The diversion of the river must be in the first quarter of 2014”, in addition, it reads where they tell the governor that if this warning is not taken into account the costs “would be enormous because it could not start generating in December / 18 ″.

Fajardo’s subordinate He told him that at that time there was a lot of concern about the miners who came to the scene to “exploit the river,” and they feared that it could be worse.

After receiving “very clear warnings”, and in light of the documents available, Coronell concludes that Sergio Fajardo did not comment on the matter and there is no response whatsoever to the allegations.

Reactions

The leader of Human Colombia, Gustavo Petro, who, as Coronell cites in his column “He continues to celebrate Fajardo’s bad moment as if it were his triumph”, responded not only to that but to other statements.

In his trills, the political leader and possible presidential candidate for 2022 questioned the approach of the journalist’s interpretation, in which he says that Fajardo’s fault was not due to negligence, but to benefit the businessmen.

Sergio Fajardo announced that in the next few hours he will pronounce on the text in a virtual space.

News in development …