New Democracy Association – Germany: COLOMBIA: Failure of the reactionary electoral farce and the “winds of change”.

COLOMBIA: Failure of the reactionary electoral farce and the “winds of change”.

The opportunists and revisionists of all colors and shades of Latin America, pushing each other, rushed to celebrate the electoral triumph of the representative of one of the two factions of the Colombian big bourgeoisie in the ballotate of the last reactionary elections of last Sunday, as expressed by one of their renowned pundits through a note in a newspaper of one of the groupuscules of the bureaucratic faction of Argentina, Página 12, Petro, una victoria histórica, by Atilio A. Boron, “Petro, una victoria histórica” (Petro, a historic victory), by Atilio A. Boron. Boron, June 20, 2022 , where we read:

“With just over 98 percent of the tables counted, the triumph of Gustavo Petro, candidate of the Historical Pact, was confirmed in the second round of the presidential elections in Colombia. Petro had 50.51 percent of the votes against 47.22 percent for his rival. It is an extraordinary victory, with not only national but also continental projections”.

What this well-known feather duster of Latin American opportunism presents as an extraordinary victory, etc., and with the well-known cliché for these cases that the “people chose change”, etc., is nothing other than celebrating the result or outcome of the reactionary electoral farce for the replacement of the authorities of the old Colombian State, a landlord-bureaucratic State at the service of imperialism, mainly Yankee. Reactionary electoral farce which has as a result to “legitimize” at the ballot box the new reactionary government, that is to say, those who from the Executive will crush the people of Colombia in the service of imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism and semi-feudalism, in complicity with those who from parliament will serve to apply the three reactionary tasks which are the folly of imperialism and Colombian reaction: To re-impel bureaucratic capitalism in the worst crisis of its history so far, to restructure the old State so that it may better serve to crush the struggles of the proletariat and the people and to seek to conjure up and crush the development of the revolution in Colombia, which has as an urgent and overdue task the reconstitution of the Communist Party, that is, of the heroic fighter who must lead the revolution of new democracy by means of people’s war.

The replacement of reactionary authorities. It is the reactionary solution to the crisis to try to cajole the masses and with “more State” to better serve the faction that until now has headed the Executive, with a change of horses the participation of the State in the economy will be promoted to try to refloat the comprador faction in serious problems, sunk by the crisis that affects the country from its foundations to its heights. That is the role of the bureaucratic faction, to strengthen its enemy, the other faction.

The replacement shows not only the failure of the comprador faction or of Uribism in Colombia, but of reaction and its opportunist and revisionist servants to achieve a historical and political impossible not only in Colombia, but in all Latin America, which is to solve the political, economic and all other crises the country is going through, which was expressed in the first place in the poor electoral results achieved by both candidates: The abstention registered in the first round was 45.1 %. And in the second round, the abstention rate, provisional data, was 41.91 %. If white, void and unmarked votes are added, the percentage of rejection to both candidates is a little more than 45%.

Then, if the participation of 22’658,694 Colombians eligible to vote was reported, which is equivalent to 58.09 % of the electoral roll, which is 39’002,239 eligible citizens, we have a figure close to half, more or less 20 million Colombians who expressed their spontaneous rejection to the electoral farce and with it to the reactionary elections and their representatives and institutions of the old State. Moreover, the 51.1% of the percentage of the votes with which the victory of the “change”, i.e. Petro, is publicized, is not 100% of the eligible voters but 55% of the valid votes.

Conclusion: the most serious crisis through which the old societies of Latin America and the rotten old States that represent and defend them are going through, which is mainly of bureaucratic capitalism and which has its maximum expression in the reactionary governments has brought down these reactionary governments and has imposed the replacement of these reactionary governments, presided over by representatives of the comprador faction by others presided over by representatives of the bureaucratic faction, many of them headed by opportunists or revisionists, this is what the latter in the field of journalism call “winds of change”. Governments “of change”, which can satisfy neither Tyrians nor Trojans because they are the result of the compromise of the two reactionary factions as we read in Boron’s opinion piece on “the winds of change” and after the quote of this opportunist, we will read the news of ho,y on the commitments of the new government of “change”:

“We also said that this is a victory of continental projections because it reaffirms the winds of change that regained briskness in the region, after a brief interregnum of the right, with the election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico in July 2018, followed the following year by the victories of Alberto Fernández in Argentina and Evo Morales in Bolivia, the latter frustrated by the conspiracy engineered by the OAS, the White House and the Bolivian fascist right. However, with the victory of Luis Arce in 2020, the course provisionally abandoned due to the coup was resumed and, subsequently, the victories of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Pedro Castillo in Peru, Xiomara Castro in Honduras and Gabriel Boric in Chile, in addition to that of the Historical Pact in Colombia, reaffirmed the will for change that is increasingly stronger in this, the most unequal continent on the planet. This is a promising backdrop against which the great battle of the presidential elections in Brazil will be fought next October, where everything seems to indicate that Luiz Inacio “Lula” de Silva should win. In that case, we would once again have a Latin America tinged mostly red -a pale red, no doubt- but red nonetheless, and which opens the doors for renewed transforming waves”.

Furthermore, lest anyone should have great illusions about this “change”, which is nothing more than a change of reactionary horses, we have the following advances of the agreement between the two factions with which the new government will open, that is to say, greater collusion and reactionary struggle, let us read the news in today’s Pagina 12:

“The leftist president-elect will have to weave alliances to form a majority in the Congress.

Petro’s challenges: military, businessmen, armed conflict and a fractured Colombia

The outgoing president, Iván Duque, assured that he will be the guarantor of a “peaceful” and “transparent” transition, while the National Liberation Army expressed on Monday “its full willingness to move forward in a peace process”.

June 21, 2022

(…)

“An important, but not majority, bench will accompany the initiatives of the unprecedented leftist government in Parliament. “Now the problem is governance in Congress. Petro must try to propose what he called a great national agreement because clearly the country is well fragmented in two sectors”, says Alejo Vargas, law professor at the National University.

In the same sense, Sergio Guzmán, of the consulting firm Colombia Risk Analysis, believes: “This result does not give him a clear mandate to execute his policies without at least trying to calm the questionings of his opponents”. During his time as mayor of Bogota (2012-2015), Petro clashed with the City Council, which sank many of his initiatives. Now he arrives surrounded by traditional politicians who could serve as a bridge to Congress.

Appeasing the markets

In his first speech as president-elect, Petro sent a reassuring message to the business community that in the campaign accused him of promoting a failed socialism. “It was a campaign of lies and fear, that we were going to expropriate Colombians, that we were going to destroy private property (…) we are going to develop capitalism in Colombia. Not because we worship it, but because we first have to overcome pre-modernity”, said Petro on Sunday before a crowd celebrating his triumph.

For Felipe Botero, professor of political science at the Universidad de Los Andes, this was “a very clear message to the right, saying ‘I am of the left, but that does not mean that I am going to radically transform the economic model'”. But economist Jorge Restrepo warns that the former guerrilla and senator still has to build “trust” with the productive sector, something “very difficult because there is no precedent of a leftist government at national level”.

For the time being, businessman Mario Hernandez, an active opponent of Petro during the campaign, was open to listen to him. “The opportunity has come for Gustavo Petro to prove to 50 percent of Colombians and to me that we were wrong”, the clothing magnate said on Twitter”.