(CNN Spanish) –– Rodolfo Hernández, presidential candidate for the League of Anticorruption Leaders, told CNN on Wednesday that he appealed the contempt order imposed on him by a judge in Bucaramanga, capital of the department of Santander. “I don’t have a case, I have 200 cases of the politicking that wanted to get me out of the mayor’s office,” he said.
The 16th Municipal Civil Court of Bucaramanga decided last week to punish him with a five-day prison sentence, with the possibility of commuting it by paying the equivalent of just over US$2,600 for not complying with a court order.
The case dates back two years when, in one of his typical videos published on TikTok in 2020, Hernández branded the former mayor of Floridablanca as corrupt. According to local media reports, at that time a judge ruled in favor of the former mayor and ordered Hernández to remove the videos from social networks in which he spoke out once morest the “good name and honor” of the former official.
When the news was announced, Hernández reacted on Twitter on May 25 and believed that it was a maneuver to stop the “unstoppable growth” of his candidacy. “You can see the fear of the change that we will achieve this Sunday, May 29, a change that they will never be able to stop. There is no right!” He wrote before the presidential votes.
Yilber Vega and Ilse Borrero contributed to this report.
