Colombia: From the Ballot Box to the Streets, in Defense of the Government of the Historic Pact

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Written by Oto Higuita

A phase of political struggle has ended in Colombia since the electoral triumph of Gustavo Petro as president and Francia Márquez as vice-president, the first non-oligarchic government elected by popular vote in the history of the Republic.

Contemporary Colombian history, in the medium and short term, has been characterized by governments of bourgeois and extreme right-wing oligarchs who based their power, order and social control on alliances with landowners, drug traffickers and paramilitary land expropriators, with large business groups and monopolies and with corrupt political elites that captured the State and transformed its constitutional and democratic essence, turning it into a despotic apparatus, a narco-state whose institutions serve as private “offices” at the service of the interests of what we call the narco-oligarchy.

To change the unjust state of affairs that rules in Colombia, apart from having a government with the will to do so, requires moving from the ballot boxes to the streets, from having been the opposition that they tried to liquidate for decades, to being the government for the first time and elected by a majority within the framework of formal bourgeois democracy with the worst vices.

Notwithstanding the historic leap we have just made, the urgent task is to prepare ourselves to defend what we have conquered at the ballot box, from the streets and fields articulated in a national movement with a main purpose: to restore the Unitary, pluralist and participatory Democratic Republic whose pillars are the social rule of law, because only then we will have returned to the starting point to begin to provide a dignified life for all its citizens, to live a tasty life.

This convulsive, dramatic and hopeful process we are living has opened a new political scenario of struggle whose main actor has been the broad and diverse social movement, made up of thousands of social organizations (indigenous, Afro-Colombian, peasants, trade unions, students, intellectuals, artists, feminists, LGTBIQ), whose polyclassist, anti-racist, ethnic, anti-patriarchal, feminist and anti-neoliberal character makes it unique because it contains the historical subject of change that the moment of struggle in which we are living requires.

The scenario of change that is opening up, dreamed of by millions of compatriots and for which thousands of absentees also fought, who could not be there to celebrate it because the politics of death cut short their lives, announces the restoration of the democratic Republic.

The survival of the government of the Historical Pact (PH) does not depend exclusively on the cabinet, the alliances and the armor that President Petro has been building, it also depends on other actors and factors of power, but above all, on the social and political movement, on the capacity we have to articulate, strengthen and regroup as a whole and with the same purpose the broad and diverse social movement that is the support of the new Government, because without it there will be no guarantee of restoration of the social rule of law.

Retaking the democratic course in Colombia will not be possible without Total Peace; without a deep reform of the institutions of the Armed Forces, National Police, (ESMAD) that will guarantee the restoration of the social rule of law. These institutions have the constitutional obligation to watch over the life, property and security of all; and without the guarantee of fundamental rights; without an integral agrarian reform that distributes unproductive lands and returns expropriated lands to their legitimate owners and credits peasant families; without a tax reform that generates the resources to implement the universal basic income for millions of families living in misery; without the right and access to quality and public education and health, that is, without these achievements it will not be possible to “live tasty”.

Therefore the importance of understanding the call of the ballot boxes to the streets, because it is clear that the Historic Pact government will have to face a hard right-wing political opposition that will spare no effort to remove it from power. In this sense, it is going to be the extra-parliamentary struggle, the battle of ideas in the social networks, auditoriums, assemblies, squares and streets; the main way to confront the politics of death of the governments of the narco-oligarchy.

The cabinet being assembled by President Petro shows parity, experience and the commitment of the ministers appointed, who will be important “pieces” of the chess of the new game. The other chess pieces do not need to be appointed to high public office, they are part of the broad, multifaceted and diverse social movement. They are the men and women who have fought and mobilized in the streets, the shock and defense force of what has been conquered.

The most certain thing is that the streets, squares and fields will again be the scene of confrontation with the old political forces that will oppose the Historic Pact Government until it is exhausted and destroyed. It is our ethical duty and political commitment to prevent it. If we have awakened, it is because we have the political conscience to do so.

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