The new mayor of Cartagena de Indias, Dumec Turpe, began his mandate this Monday with a slightly different request: exorcisms. Durbey said the office in the Customs House needed to be cleaned up, as his predecessor and political rival, William Dow, ran the city for four years. “There was no way I was going to walk into that office where the devil was,” said the Liberal politician. “I ask the Catholic Church and I say exorcisms,” he added. The petition was a continuation of the rivalry between Turpe, a former governor of the Department of Bolivar, and Tau, a controversial politician who accused all politicians, especially Turpe, of being thieves.
So far, the new president has kept his word. The office on the second floor of the mayor's office — a colonial house that was once New Granada's main customs office and once the largest port for the African slave trade in the entire Americas — is empty. Turpe is currently working on the Palacio de la Proclamacion, another architectural jewel in Cartagena's historic center that houses the departmental government office. From there, he began the task of recapturing the historic center, which had been “occupied by pimps and jibaros” during Tau's mandate, in the hands of the police.
Durbe sold himself as anti-Daw and won the elections in late October. He received almost 160,000 votes, which equates to a figure of 42%. On Halloween, two days after the election, then-Mayor Durbe put on a mask and posted a video on his social networks in which he said, “Tricky, Tricky Halloween, if I don't have money for me, I want money for me. “Your nose is falling off.” replied the heir. He mocked his rival, 19 years his senior, at X. “I am very concerned about the mayor's mental health. I pray to God for your sanity. We yearn for a peaceful, smooth and harmonious annexation process for the benefit of Cartagena,” he wrote.
Dau, a candidate representing opposition politics like Judith Pinedo, also known as Mariamulata, came third in the regional elections. The outgoing mayor's unpopularity was evident, and Pinedo, who was already mayor and came out of office with a high profile — tried to distance himself from him during the campaign. Also, the list brought to the council by those close to the former mayor, called Fuera Malandrines, was far from the threshold for electing councilors in the city; He barely got 6,000 votes in a city of over a million people.
The results are a 180-degree turn from 2019. A lawyer recently returned home after 15 years working in New York, Dao decides to confront the political class and corruption that is particularly strong in Cartagena. Infiltrates Colombian politics. He went on to win the mayor's office with 29% of the vote. However, as mayor, difficulties in turning his talk of the pandemic and change into concrete facts hurt his favor, and his unpredictable personality became increasingly controversial.
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His tenure was marked by strange, sometimes offensive incidents. In 2019, before he took office, a judge ordered Durbe to fix a leaked video on social media that he accused of corruption. In August 2021, his interview went viral in which he explained rehabilitation work on the city's road network in a very different way: imitating the sounds of trains, trucks and machinery. “From today I will allow you to say u, u, u, u… I come from Santander Avenue and there we start: uuu, brrr, load the truck…,” said the then mayor.
A few months later, the Attorney General's Office filed charges against him for “alleged breach of duty to treat other public officials with respect, impartiality and integrity.” “Truhans,” “bagots,” and “scumbags.”
But the controversies are only the tip of the iceberg; His administration was also not well received. In 2022, Cartagena was the only one of the five main Colombian capitals where poverty increased. According to Cartagena Como Vamos, by the end of his tenure, Tau had a 64% disapproval rate and 8 out of 10 Cartagenas believed the city was not on the right track.
Durbe used this bad image to launch a campaign criticizing his predecessor. At times he accused her of being in charge of the “most corrupt mayor's office in Colombia,” to which Dau forcefully responded: “I reported you as a thief.” In the end, the career politician defeated the opposition politician and won the mayor's office. These days, he keeps his office in the Customs Palace. It remains to be seen when it will be fixed. First he is waiting for a meeting with the Catholic Church, which has not yet officially responded to the public request.
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