2023-07-21 07:05:00
The race for the presidency of the republic opened with a call from the CNE for tolerance and to avoid personal attacks. It actually started a few days ago, without authorization. Laws are obeyed but not fulfilled was the common saying in the Colonial period. It would seem that it is still valid today.
Given the background in the “open mouth” of the campaign, it seems that we must prepare ourselves to listen to the wealth of offers, promises, speeches, some media show and other tricks to persuade voters in record time, and win the majority of the votes. votes.
The electoral race is sui generis and very particular, without precedents, because the candidates –except in one case- do not belong to the political parties that sponsor them and, therefore, do not align with their ideology. The candidacies are born from agreements with the parties in which the great absence is the ideological coincidence, which has given rise to situations that reach the category of the absurd and the implausible.
Added to this are social networks and “fake news”, which have meant the fertilizer for anarchy in the formation of public opinion. Without sufficient intellectual rigor and with a lack of basic knowledge for a not contemptible opinion, the power of social networks has become the source for the political “formation” of large sectors of society. It is necessary, then, to guide the population, with objectivity and intellectual honesty, in the knowledge of the elements that must be part of the evaluation of the action plans presented by the candidates.
The country has the right to demand rigor in the presentation of proposals, strengthening the construction of good reasoning. The confrontation of ideas and the reciprocal evaluation of arguments are activities that cannot be dispensed with, especially during electoral campaign times.
Since the debate of ideas with argumentation is characteristic of democratic societies, it is necessary to contribute to reassess democracy as the form of coexistence that, despite its imperfections, offers conditions to collectively seek justice with respect for diversity. That should be the tenor of the campaigns of the presidential candidates and also of the role of those who inform, communicate and issue opinions, since their influence on the decisions that citizens make, especially when casting their vote, is decisive. But this is a particularly difficult point in a polarized country, where there is a very strong current of rejection of those who hold different convictions.
#demand #arguments #Comercio