The new mayor of Cartagena de Indias, Dumek Turbay, began his term this Monday with a somewhat strange request: an exorcism. The office in the Customs Palace needed to be cleaned, said Turbay, after his predecessor and political rival William Dau ran the city from there for four years. “There is no way for me to enter this office where the devil was,” said the Liberal Party politician. “I ask the Catholic Church, and I mean it seriously, to perform an exorcism,” he added. The petition was the continuation of a hostile rivalry between Turbay, the former governor of Bolívar department, and Dau, a controversial anti-politician who accuses all politicians, and more recently Turbay in particular, of being thieves.
So far, the new president has kept his word. The second-floor office of the mayor's office – a colonial house that was once the main customs office in New Granada and once the largest port for the African slave trade in all of the Americas – remains empty. Turbay currently works at the Palacio de la Proclamación, another architectural gem in the historic center of Cartagena and where the departmental government has an office. From there, he began his task of recapturing by police the historic center, which he said was “occupied by pimps and jíbaros” during Dau’s time in office.
Turbay won the late October elections by selling himself as anti-Dau. He received almost 160,000 votes, representing 42% of the vote. On Halloween, two days after the election, the then mayor dressed up in a Turbay mask and published a video on his social networks in which he said: “Triki, Triki Halloween, I want money for myself when there is no money for gives me.” “Your nose is falling off.” The successor reacted. He mocked his rival in X, who is 19 years his senior. “I am very worried about the mayor’s mental health. I pray to God for your mental health. We long for a calm, warm and harmonious connection process for the good of Cartagena,” he wrote.
I am very concerned about the mayor's mental health. I pray to God for your mental health. We long for it #Cartagenaa calm, warm and harmonious connection process.
We will announce further details about our splicing order shortly. #UnitedToMoveForward
Happy…— Dumek Turbay Paz (@dumek_turbay) November 1, 2023
The candidate who represented anti-politicians like Dau, Judith Pinedo, better known as Mariamulata, came third in the territorial elections. The outgoing mayor's unpopularity was evident, and Pinedo – who was already mayor and left office with great popularity – tried to distance herself from him during the campaign. In addition, the list that people close to the former mayor submitted to the council under the name Fuera Malandrines was well below the threshold for the election of councilors in the city; In a city with more than a million inhabitants, he only got 6,000 votes.
The results represented a 180-degree turn from those of 2019. Dau, a lawyer who recently returned home after 15 years working in New York, decided to confront the political class and corruption, which is particularly strong in Cartagena permeates Colombian politics. He went from being an unknown to winning the mayor's office with 29% of the vote. As mayor, however, the pandemic and the difficulties of translating his talk of change into tangible facts dented his favor, and his unpredictable personality became increasingly controversial.
Newsletter
Current events analysis and the best stories from Colombia, delivered to your inbox every week
GET THIS
His time in office was marked by strange, sometimes offensive incidents. In 2019, before he took office, a judge ordered him to correct a video he leaked on social media in which he accused Turbay of corruption. In August 2021, an interview of his went viral in which he explained the renovation work on the city's road network in a very strange way: with imitations of the sounds of trains, trucks and machines. “From today I allow myself to say: U, u, u, u… in the end we will start renovating the road network. I come from Santander Avenue and that's where we start: Aww, brrr, load the truck…” said the mayor at the time.
A few months later, the Attorney General's Office filed charges against him “for alleged violation of the duty to treat other public officials with respect, impartiality and fairness” after audio recordings of a council meeting were released in which Dau He treated his subordinates as “truhans,” “faggots,” and “Scumbags.”
But the controversies were just the tip of the iceberg; His management was also not well received. In 2022, Cartagena was the only one of Colombia's five main capitals where poverty was increasing. At the end of his term, Dau had a disapproval rate of 64% and 8 out of 10 Cartageneros believed the city was not on the right track, according to Cartagena Como Vamos.
Turbay used this bad image to launch a campaign criticizing his predecessor. At one point he accused him of running the office of “the most corrupt Colombia,” an accusation to which Dau responded forcefully: “I reported you as a thief.” In the end, the career politician beat the anti-politician and won the office of mayor. One day he will also keep the office in the Customs Palace. When exactly that will be remains to be seen. First he is waiting for an appointment with the Catholic Church, which has not yet officially responded to the public request.
Subscribe to the EL PAÍS newsletter about Colombia here and the WhatsApp channel here and receive all the important information on current events in the country.