*breaking latest news of a “police state”
*Recovery of good sense and decency
There are many surprising things derived from the Casa de Nariño scandal this week. A first, certainly, the delay of President Gustavo Petro in having left his right-hand man, Laura Sarabia, as soon as he was aware of the outrages she had incurred from her position as head of the presidential office and the obvious outburst on her part when ordering a polygraph in the basement attached to the government palace on his domestic servant, following the theft of a chuspa with dollars in his private residence.
Indeed, it was not only an act that clearly violated human rights, but a criminal attitude that allowed us to deduce other anomalous behaviors of the same depth, covered up in pageantry and red carpets in the country’s center of power. Likewise, right next to the balcony from where the president usually speaks about his fiery slogans and the reforms that are becoming more entangled every day in the upside-down manner in which they have been proposed and debated, based on a polarizing spirit and on not rarely, vindictive.
And this delay was surprising, not only because of what was said, but also because this has been a government that, in the months that it has been in office, has not stopped in mind to get out of many of its ministers in the most resounding way, beheading generals of the Army and the Police, of producing a rosary of public servants of all kinds who did not manage to carry out even a minimum of their functions or who were forced to resign for not admitting falsehoods in the reports to public opinion, as in the Ministry of Mines on gas reserves. Therefore, the departure of Sarabia seemed sung, since the magazine Week made public the outrages against the domestic servant from the palatial powers.
But it was not like that. On the contrary, following investigations by Daniel Coronell, in La W, another surprise came, when it was also made public that there was another important protagonist: the ambassador to Venezuela, Armando Benedetti. And there the mess was even greater, since strange trips to Caracas on very expensive private flights were revealed, in which her domestic servant was going in order to persuade her not to talk about the behavior of Sarabia, the alleged record of the diplomat. And the surprises continued with the struggles in the Foreign Ministry, between the minister and the ambassador himself, due to the absence of travel permits. And so, issues of advice and postage came and went. Until the ambassador himself hinted that, in addition to polygraph, there were illegal shots involved, which would be the cover.
To all these, the only thing that was known about the president was his untimely accusation that in Colombia the authorities were giving a “soft coup”, alluding to the rulings and legitimate sanctions against parliamentarians from his group, which in the long run did not happen. of being a serious distractor in the face of what was already coming upside down for his government: that, certainly, illegal telephone interceptions were taking place, violating human rights. Then, the Historical Pact came out en masse to defend the thesis that the president had drawn from the cup, announcing international denunciations regarding the national judicial opinions. Just at that moment, to another surprise, the Prosecutor’s Office found merit to sanction with 16 years of inability to hold public office who had served as Petro’s ambivalent opponent in the presidential campaign, due to a notorious case of corruption, adding the sentenced to the hubbub of the Historic Pact against the Colombian control agencies. And as if that were not enough, a flagship senator from the “pactist” left surprisingly and pejoratively described the aforementioned domestic servant as a “servant”, making clear the contempt and insulting nature of an activity that deserves all consideration and respect.
But all that bullshit came to a head when the Prosecutor held a press conference, reporting that the telephones of Laura Sarabia’s servants had indeed been tapped. And that it had been done nothing less than based on a false report in an investigation against the ‘Clan del Golfo’, in Chocó, which compromised an officer and some police patrolmen. But, is everything going to stay in a few policemen? In fact, the whole country is wondering who gave the order and why. Even more: What is the scope of what the Prosecutor said that the strikes returned?
In the end, the president had nothing more than to finally act in the face of what was untenable and removed two of his favorite officials. But the Colombians do not finish coming out of their stupefaction. Certainly, much of what counts in a government is style. Or as MacLuhan said: the style is the man. And faced with the style of what has been seen in recent months, Colombia has only to cry out for human rights, the rule of law and order, respect for human dignity and what today seems more necessary than ever: the recovery of good sense and decency.