Red Wink: It would have worked for Sergio Fajardo to leave the color green to attract liberals

The campaign of the presidential candidate for the Centro Esperanza Coalition, Sergio Fajardo, made a risky bet last Wednesday: to set aside the green color that has represented the former governor of Antioquia since his 2018 presidential aspiration to use red tones in his iconography and social networks.

As is customary in everything around Fajardo, the campaign team was not too specific in explaining the decision in their press release. According to them, the change of image took place to include all the political forces that make up this coalition, “which includes all those who agree in the fight against corruption, the priority for education and the recovery of security, from a perspective of center and real change.”

They also assured that the image will not only be red or green: it would take on different shades depending on the occasion so that people from all sectors far from extremes feel identified.

However, it is somewhat suspicious that the first color chosen to make the temporary change of iconography was red, which for almost two centuries has been representative of the Colombian Liberal Party, the oldest in the country, which did not present any candidates for the presidential contest and which is currently headed by the former president Cesar Gaviria Trujillo.

At this point it is worth remembering that Gaviria and Sergio Fajardo don't get along. The liberal leader has said that, according to him, Sergio Fajardo represents questionable morality and positions that seem more ignorant than moderate. For his part, Fajardo said of Gaviria that “he is not a celestial being, he is an ordinary politician and, suddenly, even less than anyone”.

In addition, in the first meetings he held with the liberal bench after the legislative elections of March 13, they concluded that “we are not going to accompany the aspiration of candidate Sergio Fajardo, because on several occasions he has stated that he did not need the Liberal Party to win the presidency of the Republic”.

Then, the temporary change from green to red can be interpreted as a nod to liberal militants who disagree with the party's decision to exclude themselves altogether from talks with the candidate of the Centro Esperanza Coalition.

Apparently, it did. The first liberal to show public support for Sergio Fajardo is not at all despicable: Senator Horacio José Serpa, son and political heir of Horacio Serpa Uribe, former liberal president who died in October 2020.

According to a statement that Serpa published on his Twitter account, he made that decision because Fajardo would prevent “the country from moving theatrically to the left or to the right. We must have our eyes focused forward, without taking our eyes away from that direction.”

In addition, Serpa has made a very provocative statement in several interviews and on social networks: “We must vote with conviction, without paying attention to what the former presidents want to impose on us.”

However, the iconography of candidate Fajardo's social networks has already returned to the usual green color. Maybe the color red already did what it had to do. What will be the next tone chosen and who will it be aimed at?

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