Darkness falls on Colombia yet again (has it ever left the place?). Tomorrow we go to the polls and yet our presidential hopefuls have only managed to disappoint rather than inspire.
Worse still, we have witnessed the obscene spectacle of a dirty tricks campaign in which we have been asked to determine whether the most cunning of criminals is either Juan Manual Santos or Oscar Ivan Zuluaga.
Any proposals or visions for Colombia the candidates might have had have been drowned out.
Ridiculous when we consider the two candidates involved in this twisted plot of spying and crimes against the state were cabinet colleagues not so long ago. Bizarre to note these two warring factions had their political careers bolstered by the same man; former president Alvaro Uribe Velez.
The reality of this election is clear; despite the pretend warfare and the faux polarization, the candidates neither represent different visions nor offer any real solutions to Colombia’s structural problems.
Their proposals are hostage to the belief that more not less bureaucracy is the answer – something that has historically failed in Colombia.
Perhaps there is one candidate, leftist Clara Lopez, who is brave enough to question the current economic and political model. Sure, her words sound great, but her party has demonstrated time and time again that when they reach power, words and actions are separated by a monstrous gap.
Colombia´s presidential election shows us the nation’s politicians are unwilling to accept the country’s problems and even less prepared to seek to resolve them. Agrarian reform, the absurd concentration of power and wealth in a few families, the sociological phenomena of a country with internalized “anti-values” due to ¨narco-culture¨, the decentralization debate, and the gaping chasm between laws and reality are all topics which have largely been ignored.
This comes as no surprise when we consider that those in charge of asking the questions are the very same who are also in charge of providing the answers; a media-banking-political establishment, whose private interests stop it from seeing any reality much beyond the tip of its nose.
You see, when the establishment asks the questions, the answers can only be accommodating to that establishment. If we the people have no role, how can we force the establishment to take the decisions that would benefit us instead of them
If no candidate is offering any answers, the only alternative is to spoil the ballot paper – to vote “en blanco”. In short, a “blank vote” victory is the only true manifestation of unconformity.
The situation is similar to that of the accommodating and permissive chef who kindly asks all the different birds (pheasant, duck, quail, turkey, etc.) democratically to choose the sauce which they would like spread on them at the time when are being eaten. The chicken humbly responds that she would actually prefer to not be slaughtered. Here, the chef intervenes and politely reminds the subversive bird that such an option is entirely off the menu.
But we should ignore this oligarchical chef, and dream dangerously.
We turkeys have voted for Christmas too often in Colombia. It’s time to elect something different to merely the sauce that sweetens our slaughter.
Let´s win by voting en masse “en blanco”, and show the chef once and for all that his political reality does not work for us in its current state.
Photo, Colombia’s Voto en blanco campaign
