The director of the Mission in Chile of the Nansen Center for Peace and Dialogue, Alfredo Zamudioarrived this Monday at the Hall of Honor of the University of Santiago de Chile to participate in the Inauguration Ceremony of the Academic Year of the house of studies.
The representative of the center based in Norway, who in 2021 participated in the ‘Constituent Reflections’ conferences organized by the Constitutional Convention of that time, gave the talk ‘Building a Shared Future in Times of Mistrust’ at Usach.
After his presentation, Zamudio made an evaluation of the political-social moment that the country is going through today. “Chile at this moment is rediscovering itself. We have one more chance and I think we can do it, ”he said.
“We cannot continue to promise things that are not fulfilled,” he said. “Situations can be transformed, improved, if it is possible to create meeting points in which groups, parties and people can understand the divisions from both sides of the gap”, he considered.
For the director, the value of the past and current constituent process is that both involve transformation, but that more components are required for transformation to happen. “The country needs to keep talking,” he warned.
Finally, he pointed out that public universities have an important role to play. “With everything that has happened to us, we are like an archipelago of differences, worlds apart, and public universities can unite those islands and transform that archipelago,” he asserted.
For his part, the Rector of the Usach, Dr. Rodrigo Vidal Rojastook advantage of the topics discussed in the talk to transfer them to the new constituent process.
“We are in a complex transition situation. There are certain sectors of society that are not very open to dialogue today, there are closed positions for various reasons and I am not saying that they are wrong, only that they avoid dialogue while other sectors want to promote it, ”he said.
In this sense, the highest authority of the House of Studies said that “precisely, the constituent process is going to be a good reflection of how much we are capable today of agreeing on a way of living together, to have a Constitution that represents all of us.”
“I have the impression that we still have a long way to go to meet again and break down the mistrust in order to break down those preconceived ideas that one has about each other, and move towards a better future, but I am optimistic and I believe that indeed, with everyone’s effort and all of us, we can get there, ”he closed.
