What do we do with the truth?

Álvaro Uribe in a file photo in January.RR.SS.

The question arises at a time when justice does not give the answers, accusations arise multiplying at election time and philosophy is too little for me to respond responsibly.

Wow heresy.

I explain myself in the questions: how do we know what is true when justice takes at least 20 years to validate the testimonies of the accusers and when those who accuse end up in many cases being the perpetrators of those they point out?

And even more serious, when within the judicial system there are those who allow themselves to be corrupted with the money of the person under investigation or the judge has been chosen to take care of the sins of his constituent?

How to build an ethics of the public when those who are singled out resort to “it is a political persecution” and stay there on their pedestals to receive the favor of the vote because we are only guilty until a judge rules it.

The presumption of innocence prevails.

But not virtue.

Vivian Neuman says that we are facing the tension of the truth that society knows, the one established by the judges and the wait for that extrajudicial truth that comforts us.

And I think of the Truth Commission led by Father Francisco de Roux, in the search for truth that needs time, a lot of time to be decanted, explored, investigated and that does not necessarily seek punishment.

It is the truth that becomes the story in which we find ourselves because we confess and recognize ourselves in order to then walk a path without hypocrisy.

Go idealism, but good.

Neuman mentions the work of Rodrigo Uprimny and María Paula Saffon in Colombia, "Judicial Truth and extrajudicial truths: the search for a dynamic complementarity", to answer the question that keeps me up these days when from journalism I refuse activism and I insist on giving our reading or listening audiences some element that separates them from the extreme fanatics who, from the left and the right, validate petty crime and crimes against humanity, surrendering the soul that will get sick little by little until it ends with their families and communities for not being able to ration.

But I land on today and this week I consider what happened: Andrés Vásquez, former adviser to Piedad Córdoba, declares in the Supreme Court of Justice of Colombia that alias Teodora, as it is “said”, was known in the computers of the late former boss of the FARC guerrilla, alias Raúl Reyes, did more than humanitarian work and practically trafficked with the hostages, determining the times in which they should be released.

She said it in the case of Ingrid Betancourt, who was kidnapped for 6 years.

The now presidential candidate is re-victimized and the Senate candidate, accused of her, should she give up her claim to be elected senator on a list of the historic pact, Gustavo Petro's party?

Possibly in relation to political responsibility, yes, but not from the presumption of innocence.

The scenario for the citizen who is going to vote next March 13 to renew the congress, is to exercise his right in a scenario of doubt, if anything.

What do we do with the truth?

Again.

Aida Merlano, the sexual and electoral operator of two politicians from Barranquilla, speaks from Venezuela, protected by the Maduro regime, after having escaped from the Colombian authorities by jumping out the window of a dental office, raped according to what she says in her story, reproduced over and over again by the media, and almost murdered by hired thugs, who, in Barranquilla, the city where she was born, never considered buying votes a crime because she grew up in that, they bought votes.

What a disgusting generality where there are humble homes in that which is also my city, where a home has never paid or received a bribe.

He recorded his lovers from whom he says he received the money to get to congress.

Those affected say that she lies.

Her lovers declare they are sorry for having fallen into the webs of the love of the former senator that they invented.

Her daughter goes around the world talking about the need to break social patterns to validate maternal behavior and be visible in the same media.

And when will justice tell us the truth?

Are we left with her testimony and the reaction of those indicated and her only acknowledgment that the flesh is weak but not until it is delivered to the devil?

For years we have attended the investigations against former President Álvaro Uribe.

Again and again accused of witness tampering, paramilitary.

Certain testimonies, other changes according to the extortionist's pocket.

And Uribe there victim and victimizer without a final ruling, even playing on the political stage, less and less, but there.

And so we go without knowing what to do with the truth, because we assume a truth that is not judicial, a truth from corridors, that is not a social or historical truth that takes time, because the judicial operators also gave themselves over to the corrupt, to the system with the that they are elected and they appear neat that no longer convinces anyone while the citizenry, sheltered in disgust from so much impunity, becomes fanatical and, therefore, unable to choose well, to vote well.

And so we continue to assume guilty those who may be innocent just because it fits what we want to believe.

Or declaring the worst innocent because in the end someone has to declare what is true to rebuild a decent route along which to move.

But while a judge declares them, there are truths that we have seen, that we have documented and our conscience and our vote must move on those.

Or is it that perhaps we need someone to rule against the priests who abused minors for years in the Spanish church.

Punishments often depend on our being able to look the offender in the eye and deny him the complacency he feeds on.

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