2023-06-24 03:14:29
To meet the deadline for the reform, on July 20, the Ministry of Education shared with the student organizations a document that compiles 17 proposals from different organizations for the reform. The idea is that the organizations publicize it and then hold various meetings in the coming days, including popular assemblies in the regions.
The ministry is working with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on a matrix that will gather and compile the proposals that arise from these dialogues. The challenge, again, is time. And how in that time the government is going to guarantee the popular representation that it seeks for the reform.
The other assemblies do not have a clear line
The entity in charge of coordinating the popular assemblies is the Ministry of the Interior, specifically the Vice Ministry of Social Dialogue. Lilia Clemencia Solano, the vice minister, told La Silla that each ministry is calling their assemblies. “We at Min Interior are going to have 13 social dialogues between now and December. We start this Saturday in San José del Guaviare”.
The dialogues also include Cali, Popayán, San Andrés, Medellín, Riohacha, Pasto, Quibdó, Mocoa, Villavicencio, Montería and Florencia. The places were chosen in a meeting held by the Interior Ministry at the National University a month ago, before Petro’s call to the popular assemblies, with 1,500 people from indigenous, Afro-descendant, human rights sectors, among others who could register to attend through a virtual platform.
According to the vice minister, the topics of the assemblies vary according to each region. “In some places the issue is peasant, cocalero, in others on indigenous issues, food sovereignty, mining, etc.”
The official said that later they will seek to articulate what is said in those dialogues with the assemblies that each ministry holds.
Paulo Tovar, coordinator of the participation and dialogue line of the Ideas for Peace Foundation (FIP), considers that the government’s biggest challenge is to avoid repeating conversations that it already had in spaces such as regional dialogues.
“Are the 89,000 proposals from the binding regional dialogues going to be collected in the assemblies? If not, it will simply become emotional and suddenly functional to the interests of the government. And it can generate great frustration for citizens who attend spaces and then are invited to other spaces to speak the same thing, ”she said.
The vice minister says that it will not be like that. “The popular assemblies are not going to be a campaign rally. They are for all people, men, women and children. People are not summoned by ideology but by the issues”.
For now, the idea of the Ministry of the Interior does not fully reflect Petro’s request in his speech on June 7, in which he called for popular assemblies “in all municipalities” and meetings “periodically.” The meetings that begin this Saturday in San José del Guaviare will be one-day sessions that will later be followed up, according to Vice Minister Solano.
It is also up in the air how these spaces for dialogue are going to be coordinated with other parallels that the government is putting together, such as those of the peace process with the ELN. At the Havana table, a process for the participation of society in the dialogues was agreed upon, which includes meetings on issues that will also be discussed in the popular assemblies, such as environmental and economic policy.
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