Gaviria against Gaviria

The former rector of the University of Los Ande, Alejandro Gaviria, during the Hay Festival, in Cartagena, in 2020.Ricardo Maldonado Rozo / EFE

Alejandro Gaviria is one of the 60 candidates who wants to become president of Colombia and believe me, he is not just any candidate.

He is an acute intellectual who does not mince words and who has had the courage to confess that he is an atheist, knowing that such revelations in such a deeply Catholic country have political consequences.

He has presented himself as an independent and reformist candidate who wants to unite the center to defeat Gustavo Petro, the leftist candidate who continues to lead the polls.

Colombia

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Alejandro Gaviria I repeat, it is a rare bird.

In a country where politics is dominated by children and grandchildren of former presidents and where speech has been reduced to propaganda, it is refreshing that there is a candidate wanting to recover ideas to change our destinies.

Therefore, because he has everything to make us dream, it is not understood that he has decided to launch himself into politics supported by former President Cesar Gaviria.

He runs the liberal party as if it were his hunting ground and professes a liberalism far removed from ideas that has survived until today thanks to the perks and contracts with the Santos and Duque governments.

Alejandro comes, like Professor Antanas Mockus, from the academy. He worked first as a technocrat in the first Uribe government and then as a health minister in the Santos government. There he faced the power of big pharmaceuticals because he got involved in regulating the price of certain drugs and questioning the patent system, a decision that was considered by the US embassy as an aggressive act and an attempt to change the rules of the game in the United States. foreign investment. He is an obsessive opponent of the prohibitionist policy of the United States against drugs, speaks of Spinoza and Aldous Huxley as if they were authors known to all Colombians, and writes outrageous essays on human nature. His opponents, who have them, say that Alejandro is at heart a neoliberal in sheep's clothing,but his admirers, on the other hand, see in him a progressive man who dares to say that he is in favor of the decriminalization of abortion when not even Petro dares to get into those waters.

It is surprising that such an experienced mind has decided to accept the machinery of a party that no longer defends the liberal ideology. This community has starred in several corruption scandals and represents clientelistic and corrupt politics, which offers support in exchange for positions and is of course not interested in changes that alter the status quo.

For someone who got into politics because he wants to revalue it and restore his dignity, this support from large clienteles is a cumbersome start and could not be more wrong. While Alejandro thinks about how to make changes towards a more equitable and less corrupt society, the liberal party of the other Gaviria, protagonist of scandals such as that of parapolitics and Odebrecht, is thinking about how not to leave power. Even several of its congressmen are mentioned in the latest corruption scandal in which the Duque government handed over a millionaire internet contract to a corrupt network.

Alejandro has said that accepting the support of Cesar Gaviria and his hosts does not take away his freedom of action or constrain him when it comes to promoting the changes he wants to make.

However, it is also true that patronage when supporting a candidate is never done for free.

It is clear that Alejandro's candidacy does not only rely on the machinery of the Liberal Party.

You also have great entrepreneurs who have lined up with you and are helping you.

Only in this way can it be understood that in just 15 days it has obtained 300 thousand signatures of one million that it needs to be able to register its candidacy;

a feat that may have cost him close to three billion pesos.

Behind Alejandro Gaviria seems to be the Olympus of power.

He has the support of former presidents, there is also talk of Juan Manuel Santos and powerful businessmen.

However, it is not easy.

It is one thing to have the support of Olympus and another to convince people that you can dance and eat at the same time.

It will be interesting to see how he is going to unleash the contradictions that he has with his other Gaviria and if he is going to manage to dominate that beast or if the beast is going to end up taming him.

Since Ivan Duque came to power four years ago, with no further career or merit other than having been chosen by former President Uribe, politics in Colombia have shrunk in such a way that most of the candidates in the electoral contest four years afterwards, they are as nondescript as Duque was. Many of them lacking in merit await the same miracle that brought Duque to power and they trust that these next elections will be more of the same, and that anyone can reach the presidency of Colombia if they have a former president behind to align them. to the establishment and achieve the miracle.

However, there is nothing to suggest that the upcoming elections will be more of the same.

Duque's four years have worn down the Uribismo that today bears the same levels of disapproval as his anointed.

His

finger

, previously unbeatable, no longer works miracles.

On the contrary, there is a country tired of fingering, and that it is always the same people who win the elections.

That is why it is unusual for Alejandro Gaviria, who is not an anodyne, to insist on allying himself with the machines of corruption when the country is asking for other solutions.

In a country governed by an endogamous political class, it is very refreshing for someone like Alejandro Gaviria to enter the fray.

But let him do it alone, without burdens that hijack his change agenda.

The leaderships that need former presidents to take off cannot be pioneers of any change.

Neither Uribe, nor Santos nor César Gaviria should continue to define the electoral destiny of a country that has grown tired of them.

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