One of the protests in Bogotá, Colombia.IVÁN VALENCIA
Colombia has been shaken in recent days by an intense social protest against the collapsed tax reform, which has demonstrated the great fractures of the political model, the inability of the State to resolve social conflicts peacefully, the vandalism of the violent to delegitimize the protest, the excessive use of public force against civil society, the absence of leadership to channel the raging waters, but above all, the fragility of democracy, threatened more than ever by populism and authoritarianism, in the prelude to the presidential elections of 2022.
The country has lived, like many others, a year marked by the tragic economic and social ravages generated by the covid-19 pandemic, which has contracted the economy, deepened poverty and inequality, returning the country to indicators of one year ago. decade; evidenced the crisis of the sanitary model; the productive apparatus stopped and millions of Colombians thrown into unemployment, generating virulent winds for a perfect social storm, in a nation battered for decades by illegal armed groups, drug trafficking, corruption, the absence of a State in much of the territory and now brutal urban vandalism.
Unfortunately, that social hurricane has just exploded in the streets where millions of citizens have peacefully expressed, before the eyes of the world, their repressed discontent at the loss of well-being and future. The tax reform project was the excuse and the spark of the fire, but it is not the fundamental reason for what motivates the popular discontent. You have to look further back to understand what is happening. It is enough to remember that in November 2019, the national protest removed the floor of the establishment and reminded the president that it was time to tune in to the new citizenships.
Today an audacious and innovative proposal for a National Agreement would be credible, not with the same failed formula of a “National Conversation” whose ineffectiveness was manifest even before the pandemic, since lasting agreements are achieved by connecting with adversaries and not with friends. The political pacts of the past are no longer enough because the problem today is one of social governance. The president has another - but perhaps the last - opportunity to unite Colombia by leading that great national agreement with humility and greatness. Hopefully I don't waste it by making the wrong interlocutor.
The pandemic, paradoxically, gave temporary oxygen to Duque, who has concentrated his energies seeking economic reactivation and mass vaccination, taking advantage of exceptional measures to legislate without the help of a Congress, which has partially met his responsibilities virtually and has exercised political control without major impact via Zoom. A hallmark of the Government, moreover, has been to undermine the independence of powers, to co-opt the control bodies, which today, in the midst of the humanitarian crisis that is already breathing, human rights organizations indicate as absent in their work as guarantors of a Constitution that makes extremists uncomfortable. Faced with another humanitarian tragedy, the oversight of the international community will come with the steps of a large animal.
With the tax reform already collapsed, which was intended to drown the middle class with higher tax burdens, people are still outraged in the streets, with great distrust towards everything that has to do with the State. What is in crisis is the economic and political model, which requires a State pact that renews the spirit of the 1991 Constitution and not the return to the regime of the “state of siege”, to solidify a country capable of facing serious challenges that threaten to take away democracy. It is about directing social discontent by capitalizing it on reforms as a product of broad social dialogue with citizens. Colombia demands unity around that agreement.
What the country needs is a new model of State, in which the Constitution governs for all and the great reforms postponed for decades are possible: to justice, health, social protection, education, politics, public force and the field. It is about scaling fundamental rights as a priority since they have been the stone in the shoe for tyrants; to eradicate the centralism that turns the regions into minors without real powers to leverage local development; to dismantle the talanqueras that prevent social dialogue from being the essence of the construction and appropriation of the territory; to recognize black people and indigenous people, minorities and the transforming power of women and young people.
What is heard in the streets is the call to respect human rights, to reject violence, to fulfill the commitments of peace, to enhance democracy and not to dismantle the social rule of law by privileging the interests of a few. The world has to understand that what is at stake in Colombia today is democracy, in a polarized country, incapable of reaching basic consensus, with violent and criminals of all stripes ready to play again for war; with a ruling class turning its back on reality and the demands of the people. Populism and authoritarianism are on the starting line, eagerly awaiting the opportunity to strike down our future.
This is not the time for submission or silence.
You have to make yourself heard to insist on a great national agreement to defend life, repudiate violence of all origins and save democracy.
We must act together before there is nothing to save.
In Colombia we will preserve democracy if we are able to defend it.
Fernando Carrillo Flórez
is a former attorney general of the nation of Colombia.
Subscribe here
to the
EL PAÍS América
newsletter
and receive all the informative keys of the current situation in the region.
