The just-released, annual “Medellin Como Vamos” (MCV) citizen survey reveals that Medellin Mayor Daniel Quintero has delivered the worst performance of any Medellin Mayor in the entire 16 years of MCV annual citizen surveys.

The result undercuts progress made in the last two decades here, during which Medellin citizens historically have indicated relatively positive, consistent improvements -- aside from ever-worsening traffic-jams -- in over-all quality-of-life and in relatively good performance of local Mayors.

Having overcome the horrific years of Pablo Escobar narco-violence in the 1980s and 1990s, Medellin has more recently become widely regarded as either the best or (at least) among the top-three-best-governed cities in Colombia, for quality-of-life, for work opportunities and for relatively outstanding public transit systems -- thanks to enormous investments by both public and private sectors over the past two decades.

The full MCV 2021 survey (in Spanish) is available here: https://www.medellincomovamos.org/calidad-de-vida/encuesta-de-percepcion-ciudadana .

While Medellin Mayors over the past 16 years have typically enjoyed favorability rankings in the 80-percent-to-90-percent range, Mayor Quintero has seen his favorability plunge to an all-time-worst 54% in the MCV 2021 survey, conducted among all social classes in all Medellin neighborhoods. The survey has a margin-of-error of just 4.1%, according to MCV.

Confidence in Mayor Quintero likewise has plummeted to an all-time-low of 34%, while only 33% of citizens have much or any faith in his management of city affairs – by far the worst mayor in all prior MCV surveys.

Relative satisfaction with Mayor Quintero’s use of public funds likewise has collapsed to an all-time-low of 36%, the survey shows. What’s more, 54% of citizens perceive that corruption in city government has gotten twice as bad in the past year -- far worse than in prior years.

Even more discouraging, only 45% of Medellin citizens now feel the city is headed in a positive direction -- down from positivity ranges of 65% to 85% in all prior MCV surveys.