"I am too tired to work without a compass. Besides, Your Excellency knows as well as I do that it won't need a president here but a tamer of insurrections..."
Mariscal Sucre to the Liberator in Bogota to Bolivar's request to succeed him in the Presidency of Colombia(*)
I thought, like everyone else, that the results of the elections in Colombia would be different. Since the first measurement, after the first round, which gave the candidate Rodolfo Hernandez the first place in the intention to vote, with 52.3%, against Gustavo Petro in second place with 45.1%, I thought that the results of the elections in Colombia would be different (see in Spanish La República, in https://www.asuntoslegales.com.co/actualidad/rodolfo-hernandez-con-52-3-supera-en-intencion-de-voto-a-petro-que-marca-45-1-3375161), it seemed that Colombian society had the opportunity to react to the socialist misery it was facing, with the possibility of a triumph of Gustavo Petro to the Presidency of the Republic.
But as the days went by, the gap narrowed to a statistical tie between June 3 and 7, with a new voting intention that showed a single percentage point difference between the two candidates. (see in Spanish, El Espectador ¡De voto finish! Empate técnico entre Rodolfo Hernández y Gustavo Petro, in https://www.elespectador.com/politica/elecciones-colombia-2022/de-voto-finish-empate-tecnico-entre-rodolfo-hernandez-y-gustavo-petro/). This trend promised nothing but to get worse for candidate Hernandez by the election date, although some of us held out hope that something would come out at the end of the Colombian conscience, not to let what we all fear for the future of Colombia become a reality.
But that did not happen. The Colombian people finally pronounced themselves, giving the victory to Gustavo Petro with 50.44% of the votes against 47.3% for Rodolfo Hernandez. (see in Spanish Results of the Colombia 2022 elections, in https://elpais.com/america-colombia/elecciones-presidenciales/2022-06-20/resultados-elecciones-colombia-2022-siga-la-segunda-vuelta-en-vivo.html). This result deserves a less superficial look at how we were all approaching the process Colombia is going through, especially from the Venezuelan perspective, beyond saying that Colombians are stupid or suicidal. Something happened in Colombia that is preventing Colombians from seeing what we did not see in 1998.
The Venezuelan political process since 1958 was marked by the gradual abandonment of the political class to the most felt needs of the population, in spite of enjoying the highest income ever enjoyed by Venezuelans, causing a degenerative process that led to the absolute loss of credibility of the parties and their proposals. Hence, in 1998, after having given the last chance to the political class through an extra-party candidacy such as that of Rafael Caldera and his "chiripas", Venezuelans finally decided to transfer power to a coup leader, not by voting in favor of him, but against what most Venezuelans considered to be more of the same of the traditional parties.
It could be said that what happened in 1998 was a monumental historical mistake, but this was a deeply rooted feeling of social revenge that manifested itself as part of a political process in the country that would irremediably lead us into a ravine. The feeling of rejection of the parties was so widespread that, even though many of us considered that handing over power to a resentful and inexperienced military man -as indeed he was- was a mistake impossible to quantify, we Venezuelans still ended up as a people approving a Constituent Assembly that changed the institutional framework of the country in favor of a personalist and authoritarian political project. Hence, we need to reverse this as soon as possible.
Although we are sister societies born from a common trunk, we have had significant differences since long before our political and territorial separation from Gran Colombia in 1830. Our political development has been very different, as well as the perspective of our political leadership in the face of the same problems. That was precisely the reason for our separation.
However, Colombians have just demonstrated that, like us, they have reached the same ravine, irremediably following a process that would lead them to the rejection of a political leadership incapable of satisfying their aspirations. They decided, as we did in 1998, a radical change of course, turning their backs on the political leadership that has led the country's destiny since May 1958. They followed an unstoppable process, and in spite of all the warnings, they chose a guerrilla fighter, as we did at the time, a coup leader. There is no difference in the net. And why has this turnaround happened? Perhaps the following figures summarized to date can give some explanation:
"Higher income does not reach everyone. Poverty affects a large part of the population. By 2021 the overall poverty rate (by income) was 39.3% (within which 12.2% corresponded to extreme forms). In rural areas (11.7 million inhabitants) it was 48.7%. Measured according to socioeconomic conditions (multidimensional), poverty affected 16.0% (29.7% in 2010): 11.5% in urban areas (22.9% in 2010) and 31.1% in small centers and rural areas (50.8% in 2010). Thus, 8.1 million people are in this condition. The unemployment rate is 11.2% and underemployment 8.4%, but informality exceeds 40%. These figures reveal a very unequal and structurally unjust society, which does not offer opportunities for all. It is more serious in the countryside. Land is poorly distributed: 1% of the landholdings cover 81% of the land" (emphasis added)(see in Spanish El Nacional, La dura marcha de Colombia, por Jesús Rondón Nucete, in https://www.elnacional.com/opinion/la-dura-marcha-de-colombia/).
However, Colombia's GDP grew 10.6% in 2021, the highest annual increase since records began. (see in Spanish El País de España, in https://elpais.com/economia/2022-02-15/el-pib-de-colombia-crecio-106-en-2021-la-mayor-subida-anual-desde-que-hay-registros.html). Does this sound familiar? Something similar happened in the Venezuela of the ouster of Carlos Andres Perez, when, in spite of showing important figures, citizens punished the political leadership: "It mattered little that macroeconomic indicators predicted what some already saw as a miracle: after a contraction of -8.57% of the GDP in 1989, in 1990 growth was 6.47% and in 1991 it was a spectacular 9.73%. It was a take-off. Inflation also began to be controlled, falling to 40.6% in 1990 and 34.20% in 1991. The treasury began to run a surplus in 1990 and the volume of investments, to put it in very broad terms, doubled" (see in Spanish Prodavinci, CAP, the man who invented himself (IV), in https://prodavinci.com/cap-el-hombre-que-se-invento-a-si-mismo-iv-y-ultima-parte/).
In both cases, an upset people, in spite of the positive figures in the economy, the application of those results was disastrous. We are talking about societies that are very upset with their traditional political leadership, and that in the Colombian case, to date, have not changed their way of solving the problems of the population, by not applying the wealth to their most urgent needs. The most obvious proof of this is that those who tried with their votes to stop the madness of the left in power, gathered around a businessman, and not a traditional politician because of their distrust.
Irrationally upset? Maybe. But we see that peoples change the destiny of their history as a consequence of political processes of many years, not overnight, not because they are stupid or suicidal. The responsibility for what happened on December 6, 1998 in Venezuela was not Chávez's, but what came after. The responsibility for what happened on Sunday June 19 in Colombia was not Petro's, but what will happen from now on. What happened there was like trying to stop the Titanic at the last moment, a few meters away from the iceberg.
Does Colombia have the institutional levers strong enough to avoid what happened in Venezuela after the changes? This remains to be seen and I am incorrigibly optimistic. And the basis for this optimism is the work of Juan María Montalvo, Ecuadorian essayist and novelist, who disarticulated in a famous essay entitled "College, barrack and convent. New Granada to a college, Venezuela to a barracks, Ecuador to a convent" what a deputy of the Congress of Bogota pointed out after the dissolution of Gran Colombia (ver Juan Montalvo, Las Catilinarias, El Cosmopolita-El Regenerador, No. 12, Quito, 26 de agosto de 1878, en https://tinyurl.com/yckm8n4v):
"Not long ago a deputy argued in the Congress of Bogota that, Colombia dissolved with the defection of Paez and Flores, New Granada had retired to a college, Venezuela to a barracks and Ecuador to a convent. And the representative said it as one who compares the merits of the three peoples, and in an oratorical touch places his homeland over his inferior sisters: inferior, assuming that college is for education, barracks for license and convent for ignorance".
In his particular defense of the Neo-Grenadians, Montalvo especially noted:
"The Grenadians are a people full of intelligence and courage, passionate about great things: they have but one defect, and that is not wanting anyone to be anything but themselves. Athenians, Spartans, Romans, they: the others, Cappadocians, Boeotians, troglodytes. To be instructed, they demand that their neighbors be ignorant: they cannot be brave if their friends are not cowards; and for nothing would they consent that their brothers be civilized, because they would run the risk of being barbarians. The good thing, the admirable thing would be to be superior among the great, exalted among the superior; and there is no merit in the fact that the scoundrels that surround us, by dint of our insignificance, make us presume something of ourselves".
Well, as Venezuelans, and more than friends, brothers of the Colombian people, we are not cowards and we have shown it in the face of the vicissitudes of the tragedy that has hit us, so they must be brave in the face of what is coming. And Venezuela has been seeking civilization in freedom and democracy for more than 20 years, so I am sure that they will not run the risk of barbarism before we achieve them. The international movement that directs Gustavo Petro, by force of insignificance, will not be able to prevent us Colombians and Venezuelans, even if they have won an election, from being superior among great and exalted among superior...
Caracas, June 21, 2022
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(*)
Gabriel García Márquez, El General en su Laberinto, Pág. 27, Editorial Oveja
Negra, 1989, ISBN 958-06-0006-6, Bogotá Colombia.
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