“Colombia has fallen into the same position”, “Colombia is going to ‘Venezolanize'”, fears a sector of Venezuelans after seeing the results of the elections in the neighboring country.
This fear has a real basis: the election of a leftist president in Venezuela has led the country to authoritarianism, state fragility, corruption, poverty, inequality, international isolation, migration and massive displacement of more than 6 million people. Today Venezuela has an investigation open at the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity. By receiving 20% of the migrant and refugee population, Colombia, far more than any other country in the region, has witnessed the multilevel crisis that still crosses its neighboring country.
In addition, Colombia has opened its doors to Venezuelan political leaders who were forced to flee their country to avoid unfair persecution; some have strengthened ties with the Colombian right and are likely to make Venezuela an issue of domestic politics, as in Spain. This is a reality that the new Colombian president cannot avoid. With the inauguration on the horizon, what should Venezuela’s new president learn? A succinct answer: distance and differentiate from Chavismo. We will see.
A modern left?
Unlike Hugo Chávez –who appealed to the support of actors from across the political spectrum in 1998 to secure a victory– Gustavo Petro assumed a progressive left identity and took the risks that this implied in a country with a conservative trajectory. The Historic Pact promises social justice, the fight against climate change, a containment in oil exploration and a turn towards national industry and agriculture. In addition, it highlights the importance of regional development, the inclusion of the indigenous, Afro-Colombian, women, youth and peasants.
Chaves and Nicolás Maduro made promises of this nature, using similar language, but they did not fulfill them. If Petro, therefore, wants to open a path for a modern and democratic left, alongside, for example, the president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, he must execute his promises, thus valuing the relevance of political coalitions and without trivializing the logic of markets or fiscal responsibility.
Apparently, the president-elect knows this. In his speech on June 19, he spoke of “developing capitalism in Colombia” and of producing to redistribute “on the basis of knowledge that is how it is produced in the 21st century.”
Redistribution and inclusion
According to ECLAC figures, Colombia is the country where poverty levels would increase the most this year: from 36.3% in 2021 to 38% or 39.2% in 2022. On the other hand, Oxfam notes that Colombia it ranks among the five most unequal countries in the world in terms of land concentration; 81% of private land is concentrated in the hands of about 1%. Only 40% have formal employment, which represents one of the lowest rates in the region.
The Historic Pact seeks to transform the reality of the “nobody”, the historically excluded sectors of the population. Francia Márquez, an environmental leader from the southwest of the country, who will be vice president – the first woman in Colombian history to hold the position – is tasked with ensuring the fulfillment of those promises. The essential thing will be to surround itself with advisors and specialists who will allow them to design sustainable programs over time that empower vulnerable groups and facilitate social mobility, something that did not happen in Chavista Venezuela.
In the case of Venezuela, social programs, financed by revenues from the oil boom, have not stimulated real redistribution or inclusion. On the contrary, they served as a basis for political patronage and, over time, also became a mechanism of social control. Chavismo, in turn, under the mandates of Hugo Chávez, sought to benefit its base with programs and discursive recognition, while constantly attacking and excluding the opposition population.
The Chavismo that governs today under Nicolás Maduro has further repressed the opposition and the population in general, and has accepted the illicit economy in the face of the inability to generate the substantial oil revenues of the past, which has also implied the destruction of the environment, and an enormous and direct impact on the indigenous population.
To fulfill Colombia’s offer of “peace and love”, Petro and Márquez must clearly dissociate themselves from authoritarian leftist projects in the region, such as the Venezuelan one, and also address the needs of another vulnerable group: the Venezuelan population living in their territory today.
Respect for institutions and opponents
Peace as the central axis of the government is Petro’s promise. Unlike Chávez, the Colombian president-elect seems to understand that “pernicious polarization” and the annihilation of the adversary are contradictory to democracy. After learning the results, he and his advisers welcomed Rodolfo Hernández’s 10 million voters into his government; they invite dialogue and assure that they will not use power to persecute or destroy the opponent.
In 1998, Chávez won by offering to “fry the heads of the adecos in oil” and he fulfilled it: today there are still more than 200 political prisoners in Venezuela, opposition parties are prosecuted, a good number of career political leaders and journalists are in exile; even the same Chavista dissidence was persecuted.
Petro and Márquez speak, on the contrary, of building consensus and propose a great national agreement based on the participation and recognition of the regions. If the Historic Pact fulfills this political offer, respecting the independence of powers and channeling its programs in an institutional way, it would benefit Colombian society and add value to the democratic left, which would separate it from the authoritarian left, as well as from the Colombian right that in the past also tried to erode democracy while in power.
For this, the new pair that will lead the government will have to make a conscious effort to institutionalize processes and mitigate the executive branch’s personalism, the old obstacles to democracy in the region. Differentiating himself from Chávez and Maduro, but also from Uribe, Bolsonaro and Bukele, would vindicate democracy in Colombia and throughout Latin America.
As Francia Márquez says, the triumph of her platform is a historic mandate to transform Colombia. Its mere presence in the future government already marks a before and an after. But that’s not enough. The very experience of Colombia and the neighboring country teaches the entire country that transformations for the benefit of society do not happen if one excludes, persecutes or silences those in power.
If peace and democracy do not represent a collective project in its conception and execution, it is destined to fail. Therefore, the Historic Pact will have to demonstrate a strong political will to comply with democratic norms and practices, respecting the times they require, in order to provide Colombia with what Chavismo failed to achieve in Venezuela.
