El Silbón is a legend of the folklore of our plains. The unaccompanied walkers on moonless nights sang and whistled so as not to feel alone and thus drive away the soul in sorrow of a young man who murdered his father; Similarly, in Aesop’s fables is the wolf in sheep’s clothing, which despite its appearance could never stop being a wolf.
Gustavo Francisco Petro Urrego’s triumph honors Aesop’s fable. The third time was the charm, having been a candidate in 2010, 2018 and now in 2022, in close elections against an unknown and improvised candidate, arising from the disenchantment and despair of the Colombian people in the face of the failure of the status parties, liberals and conservatives. Colombians did not buy the story of the lesser evil and preferred to vote for the known bad, than the good unknown.
Due to the political trajectory of Gustavo Petro, a Colombian told me: Venezuela will do better than Colombia, because if in Venezuela there are expectations that the government is finally convincing itself that with interventionist measures in the various sectors of the economy there is no possibility economic and social development, in Colombia they are beginning to travel through that desert that is the socialism of the 21st century.
Petro’s model is very different from that of “perestroika” carried out by a series of reformist measures in the Soviet Union after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power (1985), characterized by an opening towards the countries of the Western bloc and the liberalization of the economic system. In the case of Petro, no matter how well intentioned he may be, the political alliances of the Historical Pact made up of seven parties: Human Colombia, Patriotic Union-Communist Party, Alternative Democratic Pole, Alternative Indigenous and Social Movement (MAIS), Colombian Labor Party , Democratic Unity and We Are All Colombia and the “rebullones” not precisely those of Juan Primito in the novel by Miss Barbara that flutter around the Casa de Mariño, beginning with Piedad Córdoba, without forgetting the disastrous presence of the Spaniard Zapatero, will make it very difficult for him to fulfill his promise of taking Colombia to the promised land.
Certainly, within the new wave of XXI century socialism of Ortega in Nicaragua, Boric in Chile, Lula in Brazil, Petro is the most prepared not because he has an academic degree, but because leaving behind his urban guerrilla activity he has a career as a servant public as personero and councilman in Zipaquirá; member of the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia; mayor of Bogotá and senator of the Republic, before being elected president in this third attempt.
The danger of this wolf in sheep’s clothing as president of Colombia is not the arrival of socialism to power, but his anti-democratic personality that he already demonstrated when he was mayor of Bogotá; Therefore, the worst risk of Petrismo is not its leftist ideological orientation, but rather the despotic personality of its leader, far removed from European socialism and closer to its neighboring Latin American dictators under six premises: 1) tyranny as a form of government as it was his passage through the Mayor’s Office of Bogotá; 2) authoritarianism as a legal model; 3) exclusion as a political model; 4) expropriation as an economic model in the style of Daniel Ortega and now Pedro Castillo; 5) inefficiency as a management model and 6) his announcement that the first thing he would do as president would be to “close oil exploration in Colombia”
The victory of Gustavo Petro generates some very important initial challenges for Colombia, which are based on the understanding that it is not possible for problems to be solved from one moment to the next, due to the socio-political context and its history, which has different causes and actors.
Those who visualize a democratic Petro, respectful of human rights, cannot be criticized; Colombia deserves a good government, the point is that as the old saying goes, Caesar’s wife, in addition to being honest, must pretend to be honest and Petro has so far not distanced himself from the dictatorial regimes of the Castros, the Ortegas and every bug with a nail that arrives to the power; while the Sao Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group advance dangerously in their strategies aimed at turning the region into a red red zone.
As for Venezuela, Petro will have to make it clear if he will lead them as a State relations, which range from his position in the face of the FARC conflicts in Venezuelan territory; from the activities of the ELN and other organized armed groups, to trade relations between the two countries.
