By: Carlos Tobar
We are a month and a half away from the date of registration of the candidacies for governorship, mayoralties, assembly and municipal councils. All political and citizen forces are in full swing to select the people who will represent them in these institutions. It is the consolidation of the culture of political participation in local and regional affairs that began with the popular election of mayors in 1988 and governors in 1992.
It is a relatively new experience, if it is understood that the 35 years that have elapsed are a short period of time to consolidate in the minds of citizens the importance of the instruments of direct democracy.
The experiences are of all kinds. From excellent mayors and governors who have placed collective interests as the main objective of their management, to many who left no trace or even corrupt ones who have assaulted scarce local or regional resources for their particular benefit and their electoral micro-enterprises.
A selection mechanism that has been strengthened in the citizen’s mind, to eradicate the corrupt politicians who blur the election of governors, mayors, deputies and councilors, is to pay attention to the scandalous volumes of money “invested” in their campaigns, especially oriented to buy consciences and votes.
Unfortunately, many corrupt camouflaged in personal electoral micro-enterprises, supposedly independent, continue to do harm. Deforming the constitutional principle of giving citizens the power to choose those who best represent the collective interests of equality and progress.
A regional newspaper conducted this weekend a preliminary survey of the governorship and mayor of Neiva. It is the “bump” of the race for the nominations that will be decided on July 29, the deadline for the registration of the candidacies.
From that first photograph it can be said that, in the case of government, the panorama is completely open. That Rodrigo Villalba, the old ‘liberal’ cacique characterized by his political eclecticism (he has always accommodated himself to triumphant governments), who already proclaimed his aspiration, marks a relatively low percentage. In second place, Rodrigo Lara Sánchez appears, a former mayor of the city of Neiva, who has not yet formalized his aspiration. At the intermediate level, the candidate of the conservative party and, in the lower part, other candidates with less figuration.
In the Neiva mayor’s office, a candidate appears with a wide advantage, German Casagua, with a high percentage for a preliminary survey. Quite a long way from the official and unofficial candidates of the current mayor (Wilker Bautista, Amín Losada and Jorge Andrés Gechem) and, next, the candidates who aspire to embody different alternatives to the electoral micro-enterprises that we mentioned above.
They are the first boils of an electoral contest in which the political maturity of a citizenry that is tired of mediocrity and corruption is going to be tested.