2023-10-09 18:46:00
By: Luisa Fernanda Toledo
In a schoolyard fight, the strongest, most cunning, trained or lucky person wins. Things usually end there, especially if the bully on duty is given a movie lesson and everyone returns to class, excited by the show and satisfied with the outcome. At least that’s how we like to think that conflicts should be resolved. But when weapons are involved, whoever has the largest wins and that increase has no end; There will always be something more powerful. That is where it is worth strengthening the rules of the game and ensuring that none of the actors can defeat the other with artificial instruments.
The same thing is happening right now in our country. The crisis we find ourselves in is a direct consequence of the weakening of our institutions that has been going on for a long time. Political actors, with public positions or not, have manipulated our laws to grant the anointed one in power the greatest possible weapons, without thinking that these have no preference and that they can be brandished by whoever occupies the position.
We cannot be so forgetful as to forget that the reform to the Organic Law of the Public Ministry that today makes the dismissal of the Attorney General so difficult, was promoted (pushed, forced) in the year two thousand sixteen to preserve Thelma in office. Aldana, then head of that institution and whom they wanted to protect from a “capricious” dismissal. The fact that the person who holds that position has now earned the displeasure of a growing segment of the population does not erase the serious inconvenience of holding such an important public position with such protection. The crux of the matter should not be a person, it should be, as in so many other instances of lack of institutionality in our country, the unintended consequence of manipulating legislation to favor a person, without thinking about the future.
It is difficult for me to understand how the solution that I have heard so many times to improve the State (government, organizations, institutions, call them what you want), which constantly abuses the power that we have transferred to it as a sovereign people, is to give them increasingly bigger and more powerful tools. powerful. It’s like walking into that proverbial schoolyard to fight with the guy who torments him every day and handing him a stick with nails to beat him with. Rulers abuse power because they can.
We face a week that begins with tempers becoming increasingly heated and with no signs of the parties giving up even an centimeter in their positions. I trust, for our good as a country, that there is a resolution that is of the greatest benefit to all, because this is how modern revolts have begun, leaving the population worse than when they began. Otherwise, look again at Nicaragua or Venezuela.
Violence always serves as an excuse for those in power and it would be very sad if there were a circumstance that served as an excuse to, there, break any semblance of constitutional order that we have left.
But I am afraid of what will happen beyond the end of this chapter. Because, regardless of whether the Attorney General resigns or not, we are going to be at the mercy of a system that rests on undermined foundations. Why are they applying criminal laws within an electoral process? Because they have already done it in tax administrative processes on previous occasions. Why are they politicizing justice? Because we’ve been getting our court news for years through PowerPoint presentations and press conferences. Why can’t the Attorney General be fired? Because the reform prevents it. Why do we feel that the electoral process was subject to so much arbitrariness? Because the 2019 reform of the LEPP left us with a system with too much discretion. And so, we are sailing on a ship full of holes that we ourselves have opened and it only occurs to us to make the gaps bigger instead of covering them.
The rulers, especially those who must assume their positions this coming January, must be required to return their general character to the laws, to release that power that puts them at risk of being corrupted. Because, even if you are the most pristine saint on the calendar, you don’t know who is going to replace you and, if you don’t want to leave a lethal weapon at the disposal of a possible adversary, you better take it off the table forever. Fights only solve temporary conflicts and do not resolve the true causes. Adults carry out negotiations that are beneficial to all parties involved.
#mutual #disarmament