The Emotional Hornet’s Nest

* Fedecafé in the whirlwind of trills

* Partisan fractioning as a strategy

Everything indicates that the Government, instead of taking a thoughtful route to carry out its agenda, tends to plunge into the abyss of its own emotions. At least this is what emerges from the presidential trills of the last few hours. And the same can be said regarding the unusual strategy insinuated yesterday by the new Minister of the Interior, as the first result of the cabinet crisis, of going around looking for congressmen at retail in order to add them to an electoral pool, once the parties have been torn to shreds. , and the configuration of parliamentary majorities subjected to the thick influence and the unrestricted opinion of the House of Nariño is achieved through this furtive route.

Faced with the first, it is clear that the president lost his mind with the election of the new president of the Federation of Coffee Growers, who was not to his liking in advance, throwing at him some political trills that, as a common and wild citizen, he had issued against he does not know how many years ago. That is to say that, within that regressive mentality, so in vogue in many of the manifestations of this government (not only the emotional ones but the conceptual ones), the young man elected in the internal democracy of the coffee growers, otherwise designated according to his abilities and achievements, lightning and sparks struck him, leaving him annulled in advance as a valid interlocutor. Something similar, as it is easy to remember, had happened with the president of ANDI a few months ago when, through a presidential emissary, the same effect was produced in the middle of the tax reform discussions. And not a little less of the same has been repeated in other guilds. Now, therefore, the coffee organization, whose indisputable importance is a fixed asset in the national balance, since more than 500,000 Colombian families depend on its good performance and develops an activity that is a guarantee of world excellence, has been inevitably subordinated to the harmful irritation of the divisive environment created.

To a certain extent, something similar happened with the process of electing the president of Ecopetrol, when in order to achieve the desired result the President had to bypass several emotional bullies until he reached the person of his choice. It didn’t take a minute, after completing the lengthy process, a few days ago, when the incoming official announced that no new oil and gas exploration and exploitation contracts would be signed, causing immediate havoc in the share price and raising a blanket of Doubts about the modification of the schedules established in the medium and long terms for the healthy development of the company. Subsequently, he reversed, because of course an untimely declaration in this sense could be a cause of patrimonial detriment for the Colombian State and at the same time cause an inconsequential economic panic for private shareholders.

Well, it is in that emotional coming and going that a good part of Colombian politics also takes place. And as an emblematic case, we can point to the events that are taking place today, after the surprising ministerial crisis that occurred between Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. To tell the truth, this has been a staging in the contemporary style of the series by seasons and episodes. The first of them, with the departure of the three initial ministers, a few weeks prior, leaving a trail of emotional incidents due to the way in which they were dismissed. In the second episode, during these days, an additional seven were removed and, as in the first case, with the health reform as the basic thread. It is not known, therefore, if a third episode will complete the season.

In any case, much of the plot would depend on the fate of the aforementioned reform. In principle, it remains in the freezer and almost dead in the Seventh Commission of the Chamber, since the Government does not have majorities among the benches. He had them until a few days ago, but before the word concertation, requested by the majority of pro-government sectors to reach an acceptable agreement in Parliament, the Executive, irritated, left terrified and opted for a punishment that he believes to be enormous and definitive by withdrawing the bureaucratic fees. And now, against the Banks Law itself and the legal mandates that govern political parties, the ruler sends his new Minister of the Interior to attack and break the communities through the kitchen door. And by the way, he helps his new official with a trill from yesterday where he incites an acute emotional polarization, trying to revolt liberalism against his boss, so that his minister can lurk in the prescribed chest of hooks. Under this strategy, of course, it will cause rather an automatic liberal solidarity against its new declared enemy… And so, within the intended emotional hornet’s nest, the new season will be preparing with a climax announced for May 1st. Because that’s what it’s all about: polarizing as much as possible.