Colombia, election time

One of the protests in Bogotá against the government of Iván Duque, on July 20. JUAN BARRETO / AFP

The flag is always given with the last installed legislature, an event that occurred on July 20 in Colombia when, in an unusual event, the partisan agreements to rotate the conformation of the Senate boards of directors were breached.

With a conservative president and a vice president of the opposition party, the blank vote or a kind of punishment vote, prevented the representative of Petrism, Gustavo Bolívar, from assuming the agreed dignity.

Bolívar had recognized during the prolonged social protests of May and June that he collected money and even contributed his money to provide supplies, helmets, glasses, vests and food, to the members of the so-called first line, made up of young people from all over the world. the slopes, who initially appeared to confront the Esmad (Riot Squad)

This kind of resistance in which gangs were mixed and according to the authorities, ELN guerrilla militias, are being investigated as responsible for cases of vandalism in Cali, Popayán and Bogotá, and even trying to burn policemen alive, at times of the degradation of the demonstrations, which began against a tax reform and of which Colombia came under the scrutiny of the international community and the IACHR for multiple human rights violations that occurred on the part of the State in the repression of the themselves.

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And why is what happened in the installation of the legislative period significant? Because it made visible and deepened the already pugnacious relationship between the parties of the center-left in Colombia, these are Los Verdes and Colombia Humana, raising a difficulty to confront the right-wing of the Democratic Center in the presidential elections of May 2022. President Iván's decision Duke of making the customary speech to the country and withdrawing from the premises so as not to listen to the reply that the opposition has consecrated, also revealed not only the presidential mood but also the inability to listen to the other when what he says does not validate his management or ideology . A scenario of few consensuses in a country that cries out for them.

And in this environment, the country enters electoral mode and it is well worth starting the analysis from now on what the aspirations of a range of 30 applicants represent. What for many is the atomization of vanities, or the aging of the political system, is to me a symptom of the good health of democracy. And since it is not or not to be healthy to get sick, it is better to start analyzing the different options 10 months before the elections.

Those who have made their political intention visible should be divided by sectors: from the so-called Coalition of Hope, and despite conjunctural ruptures, there are the names of the former mayor of Medellín Sergio Fajardo, the former senator Juan Manuel Galán, waiting to recover the personería of the New Liberalism, the party of his murdered father, Jorge Robledo de Dignidad, after his break with the Polo, Angela María Robledo and the former presidential candidate and peace negotiator Humberto de la Calle as well as a group of green candidates, Camilo Romero, Carlos Amaya, Ivan Marulanda, Sandra Ortiz and Antonio Sanguino.

On the left under the name of the Historical Pact led by Gustavo Petro's group, the name of Roy Barreras, who comes from the military in the now practically disappeared party of the U, joined the social leader Francia Márquez.

And arriving Luis Fernando Velasco.

In the middle without being able to be located in the center because they are part of visions more to the right than to the extreme, a group of regional leaders appears, the so-called former mayors and former governors Federico Gutiérrez, Enrique Peñalosa, Dilian Francisca Toro, Luis Pérez , Eduardo Verano de la Rosa and Alex Char, among others.

From the technocracy, Juan Carlos Echeverri of conservative essence has already announced his decision, but who is going for signatures, former minister of finance who, like Mauricio Cárdenas, appears within the scenario of the narrative of facing the socioeconomic difficulties in which the pandemic plunged us.

On the right, figures of extreme uribism such as María Fernanda Cabal are thrown into the ring within the Democratic Center, Oscar Iván Zuluaga revives, the names of Paloma Valencia, Carlos Felipe Mejia and Rafael Nieto are mentioned.

As in all elections, the appearance of what in political jargon is called the covered rooster or surprise candidate would be missing. Alejandro Gaviria, former minister of health and current rector of the Universidad de los Andes, has not yet communicated his decision as he is debating between his option for an intelligentsia as proposed by Edward Said, of the fight against the arbitrariness of power or that of fighting against arbitrariness from power, and when some of the traditional parties with their old practices are on the hunt for what would become one of the most modern options for understanding the exercise of politics.

Some of the aforementioned candidates, although they could not be classified as new, give breathing space to the electoral debate and should at least generate optimism that in the midst of polarization and clientelistic practices there appear figures with a commitment to political exercise.

It does not seem less to me if one takes into account the little possible governance and the difficulty involved in understanding the new realities not only in Colombia but in the world, in situations of deep institutional backwardness, of the complexity of societies that are advancing on the one hand. even doing space travel for careerism, or grandiose ventures that revolutionize the job market, scientists and thinkers that inspire the future and in them, misery literally swallows generations when it does not turn them into beggars, thieves and drug traffickers.

And it is not the first time that there are figures who refresh democracy, what happens is that the good options have been eliminated due to perversity or what they call experience and they are nothing more than the perverse behaviors that have marked the electoral work for decades and their complicity with the violent and robbery of the state coffers. And yet, it is possible, as shown by a woman like Claudia López to be the mayor of Bogotá.

Another element is the crisis of the political parties, the prevalence of candidacies that go by signatures, the difficulty to find the election mechanisms, fueled by the crisis of the current government.

The parties do not have candidates, and the candidates do not want the parties.

They will accept them in the end as a result of the

real politik

to collect the votes of the machinery that must be avoided from getting oiled with dirty money.

In the opinion of the experts, the only campaign that started before was that of Gustavo Petro, who since his defeat in the last elections has not stopped marking the media agenda, although he seems to have lost recent support.

I think there are already several thrown into the water.

Few women, for now counted on the fingers, which is unfortunate.

Hopefully this time the citizen will be able to scrutinize the arguments of the candidates, in their honor that of the candidate and their own, so as not to continue surrendering for a market.

We are as responsible as those who govern us.

There are options at least to start listening.

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