Sawt Falasteen - 'White elephant': Colombia's anti-corruption activist turned senator

Luis Carlos Rua -- an anti-corruption activist known as "White Elephant" -- was sworn in as a senator on Monday.

The 34-year-old has an unusual background: He studied electrical engineering, then worked alongside a city mayor before turning informant.

He established himself as an anti-corruption activist, using social media to expose irregularities in the use of public funds.

His social media name "White Elephant" refers to a colloquial term used in Latin America to describe costly unfinished infrastructure projects, generally paid for out of the public purse.

The elephant costume helped him stay anonymous in a country where activism is "a high-risk activity," he told AFP.

Rua was elected as a senator with more than 120,000 votes after a social media campaign, carried out without rallies or posters.

"I felt it was possible, but I wasn’t entirely sure," he said.

He took off his elephant mask for the first time just three days before the March elections.

-'Judas'-

After his engineering studies, Rua worked as the communications officer for the mayor of Pereira, his native city in western Colombia.

In 2019, he publicly denounced the municipal administration he was working for, accusing it of pressuring employees to support a candidate in local elections.

To back up his claims, he recorded a phone conversation and leaked the audio to the press.

This decision sparked anger among his colleagues.

"They called me Judas. They called me a traitor," he recalled.

Rua launched his project shortly afterward, travelling the country by car to expose useless infrastructure and irregular contracts.

On social media, he took on the identity of "a little elephant that danced at unfinished work sites."

"I felt like I had a responsibility," he said, as he talked about turning his "hobby into a life project."

Rua's project was initially funded by donations from his followers but costs kept rising and that income was not enough.

His followers suggested running as a senator, which would allow him to continue his work and obtain state protection.

"I started making videos, talking about my achievements. It was a different kind of campaign," he said.

But it was enough for him to win a seat as an independent senator, with the support of a small political party.

E.Aziz--SF-PST