By: Santiago Londono Uribe
I really like the exercise carried out by the newspaper El Espectador and its columnists called “I changed my mind”. In a world of tribalism in which we go out every day to defend to the deathl “right side of history“, to vote for ““the last chance to save the country” and to correct or clarify “thousands of unsuspecting, lost and deceived how wrong they are, it’s refreshing to see an activity that revolves around self-criticism, humility and recognition of one’s limitations.
Public debate, what remains of it, moves increasingly towards extremes without trying to understand the other, its history and its context; We speak harshly and forcefully against the “others” to reaffirm positions, gain “likes” or gain votes from “ours”. Let it be the opportunity to share my “I changed my mind”.
For a good part of my adult life I have dedicated myself to studying, understanding and working in the State. I have done it from the university, from the judicial branch, from the popularly elected corporations and, finally, from the executive. I was always interested in understanding and developing the faculties, competencies and powers of the public to intervene and transform society. Along the way I have obtained exciting achievements, hundreds of learnings, but I have also made mistakes and injustices and I have had deep and painful disappointments. Likewise, I have met wonderful and committed people and, obviously, dark and macabre characters.
I also confirmed that the State is, under certain conditions, an effective vehicle to improve the situation of millions of citizens, for the administration of justice and to build conditions of security and coexistence. Notwithstanding the above, and most likely because I was upside down in the state, I also recognize that I oversized and romanticized the public entity and ignored or minimized the participation and responsibility of other sectors in the construction of societies and in the solution of their fundamental problems. .
Today I think that the strength of a society does not reside solely or primarily in the State it has or in the clairvoyance and competence of its rulers, but in the ability to build proactive, respectful, collaborative and strategic relationships between public, private, social and economic sectors. academic. The State can be a mobilizer, a detonator and a strategic ally, but it cannot be the only one or the main person responsible for the direction and momentum that a society takes. On the one hand, it is limited to think that a State can at any time and on any issue represent societies as plural, diverse and complex as the ones in which we live. On the other hand, it is dangerous to place so much power and influence on the construction of the future in him and his officials.
I have already said it on many occasions: there are such important and sensitive issues in a society that cannot be connected one hundred percent to the capricious, unstable and always changing decisions of the electorate. Nor, to be clear, can we rely exclusively on market forces. The power of a society and its possibility of advancing, and therein lies my change of opinion, is not in any actor but in the fabric of relationships, communication, agreements and collaboration that is achieved between the range of actors that inhabit it. The State is not just one and is not homogeneous or stable or necessarily representative.
I have to admit that my change of opinion, at least initially, has not been the result of a dispassionate and structured reflection or a thoughtful balance but of a chain of events and situations that for the most part I have not controlled directly. I distanced myself from the State not by my own decision, but because the electoral projects of which I was a part lost. They lost decisively, too. That distance has helped me. If I continued governing, my opinion would most likely not have changed. One, finally, is not what happens to him but what he does with what happens to him.
Today I dedicate myself to trying to understand how trust is built between different sectors of society; to put processes in motion to break stereotypes and paradigms and to achieve fabrics that cross us and connect us. Although I have ideas and projects about what a better society is, I gave up trying to develop them through the ballot box and today I am much more concerned with building what theorists call governance.
My change of mind is personal. I do not pontificate nor do I seek to evangelize. Of course we cannot give up electing good governments and decent and effective rulers, but today I am convinced that we must work very hard so that society does not collapse when we do not do so. Faced with the radicalization and polarization of the debate and the all or nothing of the elections, I choose to build trust with those who are different on a horizontal plane.
