Psychologists refer to “illusory truth” as the tendency people have to assume something that is false for true simply because they hear it often enough. Politicians are experts in this art of deception. In our country, those on the left have been preaching for years that “neoliberal” policies have not brought development and that our Constitution is guilty of all our evils, when the evidence refutes them. A recent article by Waldo Mendoza, directed at the “constituent lovers”, as he called them, destroys the arguments of those who ask for a new Constitution, but it is of little use if only those of us who agree with that position read it. Those who promote the change of the Constitution know very well that their arguments are fallacious, but they don’t care, since what they are betting on is to continue giving false information until they convince people that it is true and thus achieve their objective.
One of the left’s workhorses is to blame all problems on the central government; however, a large part of the responsibilities have been transferred to regional and local governments, which are unable to use the resources allocated for investment (less than 50% as of November 2022, according to the IPE), affecting the quality of services, including health, education, sanitation, among others. It is the people themselves who elected these inefficient and often corrupt authorities, but they mistakenly direct their protests towards the central government, when they should be directed to demand greater efficiency and honesty in their management from their subnational governments.
It is not an easy task to confront this false narrative that has permeated our people, many times with the complicity of the media that, by action or omission, contribute to generating these illusory truths. The Internet and social networks also contribute to the spread of false information. Replacing the false narrative with the truth requires good journalistic work that prevents misleading or biased information from spreading without any filter.
It is common to see politicians, ministers, civil servants or ‘specialists’ on radio and television programs propagating falsehoods, without the interviewers correcting them or at least asking them to support their arguments. Sometimes they do it out of ignorance and other times knowing that the interviewees are lying, either to generate ratings or because of their political biases, leaving aside the principles of good journalism. A great challenge that we have as a society is to inform citizens so that they do not fall into the hands of false preachers. A good start would be to make them see who the real people responsible for the problems are.
