Former President Iván Duque participated in the 17th edition of the Atlantic Forum “America and Europe: Democracy and Freedom”, in Madrid, Spain.
From there he referred to the strategy and roadmap that some left-wing governments have put forward that have tried to perpetuate themselves in power. The worrying thing, according to him, is that Gustavo Petro’s government seems to copy the model.
“Democracy is seriously threatened not only in Latin America but throughout the world,” he said.
He said that in Latin America there is a script that has been used by those who are part of the Sao Paulo Forum or the Puebla Group and he described it in four steps that have been applied in some countries, including Colombia.
“They want to win elections, but once they achieve victory, the battle for power, they weaken democracy structurally in their four years. The first act is that of tenderness. They like to call on other political sectors to form national agreements, to form large coalitions, they use generous messages with their opponents to begin to disarm and weaken the collective idea that there is a risk,” he explained.
That first stage – in Duque’s opinion – tends to last very little.
The third act, according to the former president, is chaos theory.
“By wanting to ideologize all sectors of society, of the national debate, they promote reforms where the participation of the private sector is weakened: capturing the health sector, education, eroding confidence on the part of investors and something even more dangerous that is coming. hidden in the two previous phases: they have already carried out purges in the Military Forces and have tried to buy the media or try to intimidate their owners.”
Duque said that in the midst of the strategy they suffocate the private sectors that provide health services and administration and pension funds.
“Through this figure of chaos comes the fourth act, perhaps the most lethal of all: institutional rupture. They create chaos, generate rage and want to perpetuate themselves in power through rupture. They do this through rigged constituent assemblies, decrees of a state of emergency. Or, what is even more dangerous: creating partisan structures to hold state elections and impose their candidates,” he explained.
This strategy – according to the former president – was applied in Venezuela, “in Ecuador during Rafael Correa, Bolivia with Evo Morales, in Nicaragua with Daniel Ortega and Colombia is no exception because they have tried to continue these acts.”
He referred to the controversial reforms and how the Government took over the EPS after the initiative that sought to change the health model in Colombia was defeated in Congress.
“What has not happened in the country until now is that chaos theory is not working due to corruption, incompetence and, of course, the evidence that the country has seen of a Government that wants to radicalize all sectors,” he said. .
