By: Laureano S. Peñaranda Saurith* |
This is a space for free and independent expression that exclusively reflects the points of view of the authors and does not compromise the thought or opinion of Las2orillas.
In the utopian search for a balance of powers and a fruitless fight against corruption, the Colombian State has tried various mechanisms for the selection of representatives and comptrollers (municipal, departmental and district) without being able to guarantee an objective election with these mechanisms.
All the proven strategies have ended up being permeated by corruption and ultimately corrupting all the institutions that participate in said processes, from Administrative Courts, as happened in the past, to Departmental Assemblies, Municipal Councils and now, latest, universities with the vaunted and supposed “Contest of merits.”
Contest that in practice ended in another vulgar focus of corruption, where the puppet candidates of Governors, Mayors and even Comptroller General, end up obtaining perfect scores, in very suspicious circumstances and who apparently were told to fail in at least 4 or 5 exam points; so as not to reveal what is already an open secret… the sale of the exam and the manipulation of said results to favor comptrollers and puppet representatives of corruption.
That is to say, the mechanism by which this failed nation attempted to avoid political favoring ended up corrupting “some” Universities that gave in to the siren song and that today are already part of that corrupt election scaffolding, resulting in that the Attorney General’s Office announced the opening of an investigation and demand for the election of representatives in more than 37 municipalities in the country.
The matter is so blatantly implausible that “some selection processes have already been suspended on the day of the exam when one of the candidates has been caught by their classmates allegedly transcribing the answers from their sock to the answer form”, in other cases just as surreal , the process that favors some candidates in a contest called by the outgoing administration ends up being annulled through legal tricks by the new board of directors of the council in order to favor the interests of the incoming mayor, that is, a Clash of Clans which proves that the timelessness in the selection (non-coincidence of periods) with which independence was pursued was surpassed by the tentacles of corruption.
The message that the corrupt send over time to the institutions and to the Colombian nation is clear: whatever modification is introduced to the election procedure, corruption will find a way to infiltrate the processes (the law is made, the law is made). trap).
The outcome is comptrollers and representatives subjugated to the corruption of governors and mayors, completely denaturalizing their role, which is reduced to a selective and subsequent control, in which contracts are deliberately selected to audit in which it is known that they will not be found. irregularities at the suggestion of the auditees themselves.
The situation has escalated to such a point of cynicism that the Departmental Comptrollers’ Offices are now exercising Extortive Subsequent Control to the Mayors who are offered impunity for their embezzlements in exchange for onerous bribes in order to raise the money to cover the expenses of the multimillion-dollar campaigns for the Governorship and payment of bribes for the election of comptroller, that is, “an elaborate Infinite Circle of Crime” that bleeds the regions and guarantees the perpetuity in power of political clans.
In short, the care of the cheese remains in the hands of mice trained by rats, the work of fiscal control in Colombia ends up in the hands of clan couriers, who under the French aphorism ‘let it be done, let it pass’ (laissez faire, laissez passer) end their periods as comptrollers and representatives (without pain or glory) because they obey more than what they order.
More than 400 years have passed since the first act of corruption in Colombia took place with the theft of 5,000 gold pesos from the crown at the hands of the president of the Royal Court, Francisco Saande. Since then, the germ spread like purslane in Colombia, without pause and without respite, infesting all branches of public power and society itself, which today coexists adaptively with this national tragedy that is already part of our cultural and chromosomal essence.
Now you understand, dear reader… why the cheese is lost?
*Former deputy director of the National Protection Unit (UNP)
