It is curious that the same ones that are irritated by a press release where a relationship of the paid influencers of the regime is made, now they applaud when the President of the Republic declares war to death to his opponents.
There is a clear double rash on the subject. On the one hand, soap pomp sensitivity to any criticism – although the silver from the regime warehouses comes out of our pockets – and on the other, dehumanization of the contradictor. HPS is the softest thing they have told them.
The fact is that Petro was handed with the Bolivarian analogies and this time he chose one that invokes the darkest aspect of the personality of the Liberator. The death war that declared the “Spaniards and Canaries”, in what they have called the admirable campaign, was a pure and simple genocide. An ethnic cleaning of great proportions that today would be easily typified as a crime against humanity.
The president’s apologists will say that they are innocuous verbal excesses issued in the heat of the masses. Others will justify the resentment arguing real or imagined grievances of the past. The oligarchy had it well deserved, it will be justification.
The truth is that a head of state had never been in republican history – who should symbolize the national unity – shouting such an amount of expletives against their contradictors. Gaitán is the closest, but he was never the first president, and when he exercised public functions I keep prudence with his words. López Pumarejo, the true reformer, suffered a brutal and slanderous opposition, but never tempted for provocations while Rojas, who probably had so many or more reasons to rage against his enemies, was equally cautious.
Everyone knew that words kill. As an effect it ended up passing when democratic civility was eroding in the late forties until we ended with a shooting in the Congress of the Republic. And then the violence came, a purely political phenomenon fed very good by the misguided rhetoric.
It is difficult to know where the scaling of this discourse of the spit spit will take us from the presidency. Those who are reading surveys at the Casa de Nariño may conclude that they are working. The unfolding between Petro’s popularity (which increases) and that of his government (which decreases) is certainly surprising. The fiction that the president and the rest of the executive branch are two different things, where the first is a righteous avenger and the seconds a sartal of incompetent is confirming its usefulness.
The question to be asked is how the opposition should react, not only in the face of the scaling of verbal violence but also before the renewed momentum of the regime.
It does not seem successful to answer insults with insults, although it is important to highlight that certain things, such as the declaration of death war, are unacceptable. The other is to recover the political initiative in electoral code.
Having denied labor reform was not a mistake, as highlighted by prominent members of the opinion. What was a mistake was to do it without a plan for the day after. Petrism improvised his announcing a popular consultation that has given purpose to an essentially disoriented government.
At this point, to deactivate the watchmaking bomb that the government threw to the opposition, it would be best to deny the concept of it in the Senate. The usual accusations of oligarchic-esclavista indolence, etc. will come, etc. But these will last a couple of weeks until the next official scandal distracts opinion. At the same time, the labor reform of the liberals that attends some of the claims of the workers without all the anti-employment excesses of the Petrista proposal could be promoted.
However, in 2026 a narrative is needed that serves as an alternative to that advocated by the regime. It is not enough to say that almost everything, even if this is the logical and primary budget of the opposition. Something must be proposed in your replacement. A few weeks ago in this column some ideas were raised that are framed in the level of true progressivism, but one has the impression that public policies such as campaign items are insufficient.
Nor is it worth saying that before everything was fine – although we were certainly better than now, at least as far as health and safety are concerned. The promise of Petro’s change may have disappointed, but those same who voted for him could give a new mandate to the regime if they consider that, despite the bad, it remains better than the past.
That is precisely Petro’s commitment: light the speech to exacerbate resentments and rage with the state of past and present things. Searching for guilty is the magical potion of populism. The dissatisfaction with the tangible results of this failed government – which are often counterproductive to its recipients – is compensated with the psychological satisfaction given by the remuneration of a perceived affront. It is often seen in debates about equality. For many it is better for all to be poor – that is, the same in poverty – that there are some much richer than others, so the poor are relatively less poor in front of these very rich rich. Or in the same denied labor reform, which gives privileges to formal workers, who are few, but who condemns many who will remain in informality.
Petro has found his reef and will explode. His vulnerability is that he does not have his own candidates who give him electoral size. The opposition must leave the tangle of the popular consultation denying the expensive aging and define its candidates. But, above all, you have to seriously think about a country vision that resonates with the millions of people who believe that what was before – and what is now – is not satisfactory.
