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Peter Pan and the opposition in Colombia

2021-08-04T00:58:14.060Z


The Colombian opposition has the possibility of coming to power in 2022, but it is more interested in taking its eyes out of each other than in seeing how it becomes an alternative to power against Uribism


A poster against President Duque and former President Uribe, on April 28 during a protest in Medellín.JOAQUIN SARMIENTO / AFP

The Colombian opposition has the possibility of coming to power in the next elections in May 2022, but it may lose that bus again if it continues as it goes.

That is, if he continues to act under the Peter Pan syndrome, resisting growing up and maturing and wasting his energies in fueling internal fights instead of using them to see how he joins and defeats Uribismo.

The first time the opposition had the opportunity to defeat Uribismo at the polls was four years ago, but the victory slipped through their fingers.

His immaturity prevented him from reaching the second round together.

Sergio Fajardo, the candidate of the central coalition, did not support former mayor Gustavo Petro in the second round and decided to call his voters to vote blank, arguing that voting for Petro was against his principles.

While the opposition was divided, Uribe rallied around the candidate chosen by Uribe.

Despite the fact that the opposition was clear that the future of the peace agreement and the country's transition to peace were at stake, their divisions and egos weighed more.

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Because of this decision, Uribism returned to power to tear the peace agreement to pieces, as it had promised in its campaign. He reinstated his dogmas tailored to his caudillo, fear as the nucleus of politics and his privileges. However, the function this time went wrong. After three years of the government of Ivan Duque, the country has entered a limbo from which we do not know how we are going to get out. Unemployment increased to double digits, poverty is at 42%, the dollar is going to reach four thousand pesos, inequality has increased and the massacres and murders of social leaders that, we thought, would never return, are touching again at our door. In this year alone we have recorded more than 50 massacres.

This disaster has caused a large majority of Colombians to blame the uribismo for this debacle and is calling for a change of course. Support for Uribe and Uribe have fallen to unimaginable numbers and several polls indicate that there are about 85% of Colombians who say they will vote in the next elections for a candidate who opposes Uribe. This data coincides with the claim that was heard in the protests of the young people, who not only took to the streets to ask for a better future, but to demand a change of government because they are fed up with having politics blocked of restitution of lands, that it is intended to manipulate the historical memory to save Uribe from its past,that large corporations are favored while they try to make reforms that go against those most affected by the pandemic, but, above all, that they are not even heard in these claims and that the answer is always the signal. They believe that they are returning them to the past.

In short: all the conditions are in place for a change of power in Colombia.

The only little problem we have is that today the opposition is more interested in taking their eyes out of each other than in seeing how it becomes an alternative to power against Uribe.

Without realizing it, we are repeating the history of the past elections and everything indicates that the opposition did not learn the lesson, because the years go by and it is not seen that it matures or exceeds its whims.

He has everything to win because uribismo has never been so weak or so in the doldrums.

However, today the opposition is more divided than before.

We are at that crossroads.

At present, the opposition is led by two equally strong figures: Mayor Claudia López of the Green party and former left-wing mayor Gustavo Petro. Despite the fact that in the past they did politics together, that they were in alliances and that they voted many times in Congress on the same side, today they cannot even be seen. They have broken all the bridges that connected them and have declared war. Petro has made more opposition to Claudia than to Uribismo and Claudia has not been left behind.

It is true that Gustavo Petro leads all the electoral polls so far, but he does not have them all with him. Despite the fact that the Uribismo is very exhausted, Petro needs the votes of the center to win in the second round, but because of the fight it is quite likely that he will not have them. The same would happen if the candidate with the most option turns out to be the one from the center, promoted by Claudia López's party. If he wants to win, he would need the votes of the left. But as things are, that scenario may not play out either. Both are needed, but such is their estrangement that it seems unlikely that there can be an agreement between them. If they could not even agree on the election of the congressional boards that corresponded to the opposition,fewer will be able to make a pact to go together to the second round and defeat Uribe.

If the opposition joins, it has about 12 million votes while the Uribe right has seven.

Make the accounts of what will happen if the first one is divided.

The situation becomes more disheartening when it is found that the fights between the mayor and Petro are not determined by ideological issues or by great differences in their ideals.

No: in fact in the past, as already stated, the two voted on the same projects and posed very similar challenges.

Here there is no ideological dispute but a personal dispute that has two titans facing each other and that if it is not stopped can explode the opposition into a thousand pieces.

No other way is explained the way in which they are gouging out their eyes with trills, poisonous statements and disproportionate remarks that border on the absurd.

And who cast the first stone?

That hardly matters.

We Colombians who want to have a vigorous opposition, who is up to the task and who is capable of thinking and acting as an alternative to power, and that is not just a source of resistance, we do not care to know who it was that started this mess.

We are not interested in following their struggles, or their personal lawsuits, even if the networks make them trending.

We are interested, of course, that they act with greatness and without trifles, thinking more about the country than about their dreams of greatness.

Is it too much to ask?

If the opposition is not able to give up its whims and become something great, former President Alvero Uribe may, behind the scenes, continue to handpick the country's next presidents.

And that is not democracy, but democracy.

Hopefully those who are taking their eyes out today will temper their hatreds, manage their egos and get to work for what the country is demanding of them.

An opposition that allows itself to be won by its internal fights and that is marked by its egos and not by its challenges is bad news for any democracy.

And Colombian democracy cannot afford to have an opposition with Peter Pan syndrome because what we know is taking us.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-08-04

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