Colombia: Strengthen the Political Center

The political and electoral strategies that promote polarization have many things in common: the exploitation of emotions, the opposition between good and evil, the absolutization of enmity, inflexibility in positions, radicalism in words and acts And they -from left or right- have one obstacle in common: the political center. Representatives of the political center are the preferred target of extremists, who only recognize each other.

The sides that see polarization as their best way to grow and increase their chances of victory need to destroy the center. This is well known in military tactics. We must sweep the land between the two armies, we must destroy everything that can not be controlled or usufructuated by them, and thus create a no man's land. As long as that intermediate space is bigger and more alive, the smaller the possibility of escalating the conflict and reducing it to a pure dual form, to an exclusive problem of two.

The political center has content. Suffice it to look at the executions of Barack Obama and compare them with the positions of Sanders and Trump (similar on economics) or read the agreements of the German coalition. In the country, the Colombia Coalition was built around a 20-point program, with more than five sub-points in each. When an analyst or observer says that the center does not have a program or that its candidate, Sergio Fajardo, does not set a position, he is lying or talking without informing himself. Polarization promoters incite demagoguery and boom for the center's candidates to enter the territories in which they move best.

But the most attractive part of the center is in the way of doing politics. Norberto Bobbio (1909-2004), one of the most important thinkers of the last century, affirmed that in contemporary politics, means are more important than ends. With this he wanted to point to two things: the means to achieve the ends, but also the ways of doing politics. Bobbio said that in these times one of the crucial demarcations is that between moderate and radical. And there are radicals to the right and to the left. Radicals on both sides are fed by the need for protection demanded by frightened or well-established population groups. Radicals are presented as strong men; they are the flower and cream of machismo in the personal and authoritarianism in the social.

Centrist leaders are the antidote to the contemporary evils on which left and right radicalism rides: they appeal to the reasonableness of the people, they recognize multiple nuances in the points of view and diversity of possible solutions, they are moderate in the language and in the action, they have adversaries but not enemies.