The color of politics

| Carolina Vásquez Araya

Political action is not bad per se, but the result of the use or abuse of that power.

The generational change is essential, but so is the creation of political cadres capable of breaking those walls built by previous generations.

"Politics is dirty, politics is corrupt, do not get involved in politics ..." These are the messages intended to safeguard ethics and personal security at the expense of abandoning public affairs in the hands of others. Bad message, especially for new generations whose members have grown and developed in an atmosphere of distrust and apathy generated by an opaque, malicious, corrupt and free of values ​​in most countries of the world.

However, political commitment becomes the only possible tool to transform the frameworks within which power is exercised. There is no possibility of advancing in the democratic consolidation of the institutions on which justice and citizen rights rest if citizens do not participate in an organized way to guarantee their representativeness at the highest levels of a nation. The strategies by which this abandonment of civic obligations by the population has been achieved have been created precisely to concentrate almost absolute power in the hands of groups interested in monopolizing it and taking advantage of it.

This political indifference induced by the undesirable conduct of those in charge of public affairs is especially damaging in most Latin American countries whose systems have opted for the abuse of privileges, impunity for their crimes, monopolization of the leading cadres of the organizations policies and legislation with locks designed to never lose that monopoly. This scenario is especially dissuasive to a youth deprived of quality education and above all of the indispensable information to generate spaces for discussion, analysis and participation.

The generational change is essential, but so is the creation of political cadres capable of breaking those walls built by previous generations, most of them conditioned by the remnants of a Cold War whose messages were developed from the need of the United States to divide the peoples. These strategies, whose objective was to dominate them with greater effectiveness supported by repressive puppets and legislative chambers according to their projects of domination, were consolidated thanks to the infiltration of religious groups, large monopolies and a bloodthirsty repression against all opposing political thought.

Political participation, now hijacked by powerful groups with economic interests and high levels of corruption, constitutes an inalienable citizen right in any democratic country or whose legal framework allows such classification. Failure to do so is an abandonment of rights but also of civic responsibilities, since the future of the majorities is delegated to others - usually of dubious intentions. In our countries you can see the result of that abandonment in the creepy indicators of social development, but also and especially in the scandalous enrichment of the economic and political castes that govern us.

It is important to recognize that politics has no color. The color will be given by those who exercise it according to their ethical stature and values. That is why it is important to rescue her and do the hard work of removing that patina that today covers her. Nobody has the right to prevent citizen participation, but that citizenship will be the only and main responsible for opening the locks that today marginalize it.