Paola Holguín: “Colombia has to make big changes, but it can't make a leap into the void”

Following the resignation of Oscar Iván Zuluaga from the presidential candidacy of the Democratic Center, the party called for a consultation to define which candidate to support; although the results of this consultation have not yet been released, Senator Paola Holguín, one of the key figures in the community, announced her support for the candidacy of Federico Gutierrez.

About her decision, the chances that the Team candidate for Colombia will win in the first round, the suspicions of fraud in the legislative elections, the future of the Democratic Center, what she calls the dangers of Gustavo Petro becoming President and the situation in Venezuela, Antioquia politics spoke with Infobae

- Senator, what is the poll going with the bases to define which candidate will the Democratic Center support

- No idea, I really don't know what the survey is about. The idea of the party was to do a kind of poll with the militancy, so they sent people a link to answer who they wanted to support, then they extended the deadline and decided that they would make calls, but so far they haven't given any results of the consultation to the militancy, but I think, regardless of the result , it is clear that militancy has already taken sides.

- That does not wear out the party, as happened with the poll to elect the Democratic Center candidate for the Presidency, which leaves the impression that there is something that is not entirely clear

- I think that the big problem of the Democratic Center is the excess of democracy, and I don't want to be misunderstood, I am a Democrat and I think it is very important to consult the popular will, listen to the corporates, listen to the militancy, but usually parties that do internal processes require very mature democracies, and that is not the case in Colombia.

I say this in a respectful way, because the party is very new and, on the three occasions it has participated in presidential processes, although as a party it has only participated in two, before it was a significant movement of citizens, one finds that, although it is done rigorously, that the candidates take all the decisions, that there are audits, there is always a blanket of doubt for those who lose.

That is why I have always been a little critical of these processes, because, although I think that parties should be very democratic on the inside, I also think that, sometimes, excessive democracy, when there is so much political immaturity, always generates difficulties.

- If not through a consultation, what could have been done then to define the candidate that the party should support?

- I think it was too obvious, the corporates are supposed to have the representation of militancy; in addition, the one who was our presidential candidate declined in a personal way to support Federico, all the circumstances were showing the same thing.

I say this in a respectful way, I said that the consultation (of the coalitions) had advanced the first round, and I am convinced of that, because the other candidates almost disappeared, there were two candidates left, which are Petro and Fico and, when you analyze the country proposals of the two, you realize that the Democratic Center, by the of doctrine, because of the principles it defends, because of the party profile, obviously supports Federico.

It is that there are no midpoints here and there is a big difference with other electoral processes: traditionally in Colombia, except in the last elections, the decision was simply which party governed, but they all had similar models, some more to the right, others more to the left, but the conception of state and country was very similar; now no, they are now two diametrically opposed models, and so, as a matter of principle, it was obvious who the party had to support.

- But there are corporations, as you call them, that are not with Federico and that would prefer the party to support, for example, Rodolfo Hernández, the opinion is not so unanimous

- I think so, because, finally, a moment in a country like this has to lead one to make decisions that go above the party, above personal calculations and electoral calculations; perhaps it is time to think about the useful vote, I go back and say, because of the risk of the country. If the models weren't so diametrically different, it wouldn't matter, because you just vote for what you think, thinking about the second round, but this time the risk is very high and this time I think it's very likely that the second round won't happen.

I am 48 years old and I started doing politics when I was four years old, I have been doing politics for 44 years and many electoral processes and the more the processes happen, the more one's heart grows cold and learns to be more rational and this is a moment that requires a lot of reason.

- I'm going to get out of the electoral issue a little bit, but I'm curious that he started doing politics at the age of four

- I grew up in a home where people talk about politics all the time, so it's very normal for that to happen. None of my parents were ever candidates for anything, but they loved to fund campaigns and participate.

When I was four years old here people voted with some ballots, they were small envelopes and one there put the vote, people put that ballot paper into the polls and then put their finger in ink; my task was to put the party papers in the envelope, and I never forget, I have the image in my head with a Liberal Party t-shirt, My parents were both liberal, I was too fat to be their daughter, and that shirt fit me like a dress.

At that time, “liberal Fridays” were made in party houses; one went and was brandy, chicarrón or chorizo and political speeches, funds were raised in those sales; I didn't forget, I was sitting there every Friday listening to political speeches, then my parents almost killed me when I told them I was going to jump, but it's that's why I say I've been doing politics since I was four years old.

- And you from liberal parents where did you come so “goda”

- I don't know, it's just that in my house they never forced us to do anything. I remember, for example, that when I was very young my father gave me a book of cabala, a book that explained the whole Jewish religion, the Muslim religion, the Catholic religion, he gave me “The Journey of Theo”, and he told me, read this and tell me what he wants to be, his mother and I are Catholics, we decided to baptize her in the Catholic church, but the religion one chooses is for life and it is very important that you choose it with love, that you are convinced. I read all that to myself and finally I was a Catholic, I studied at the monage college and everything, but at home everything was like that.

Of course, I clashed with my dad a lot in the political debate because he was so conservative and he was so liberal, but they were very respectful and the debates were very good, and I remember that before my dad died, the last giant debate we had was about voting for Álvaro Uribe, because Álvaro Uribe had left liberalism, and that year he had Liberal candidate for the presidency who was Serpa and my dad always voted for the liberal candidate, finally, after the fight, I convinced him to vote for Uribe and it was the last vote he gave in his life.

- Let's go back to the present, you said that you are convinced that these elections can be resolved in the first round. The latest CNC poll gives Petro 34% and Fico 23%, I understand your theory that the trend is that Fico is rising and Petro is not growing any more, but the elections are less than two months away. Isn't it too little time for Federico Gutiérrez to double the voting intention with everything and the growth curve?

- Yes, because the trend of the curve is similar to that of former President Uribe in 2002.

- But with all due respect, Fico is not Uribe

- Fico is not Uribe, but the phenomenon is similar, it is very particular. One analyzes several things in politics; first, all the surveys, that of Yanhaas, that of Invamer, that of the National Consulting Center and the trend of the curve, and two, what is happening on the street.

Unlike other elections, Santos, Pastrana, and others, the same thing is happening in this one that happened in Uribe's, which is that the candidates put themselves above the parties, and then it is very funny to see the leaders of the parties going around and around to see who they support but the citizens don't, the citizens They have already decided their vote, and you see it and feel it on the street.

I had the opportunity to be in the two campaigns of Uribe, in the first one in Santos (not in the second) and in Duque's, and in many others behind, and one begins to analyze the behavior of the polls and what happens on the street and to me it seems much more similar to that of Uribe, and let's remember that since 91 there is a second round, the only one candidate who won in the first round is Uribe.

- You have been friends with Federico Gutiérrez for a long time, but you still decided to support Oscar Iván Zuluaga as his party's candidate

- But it is because I am a very institutional woman, I am a woman of the party; in fact an “inri” with which I am very unjustly responsible, my hope is that “for the truth time and for justice God”, is that people believe that I supported Federico when he became mayor and I did not support, I sat down with him and said: I cannot support him, you know that I am a party woman, but hopefully I lose, and I voted for Juan Carlos Vélez, who even lost, because of party discipline, and in the previous one I voted for Ramos, so it's very particular because I couldn't campaign with Fico, so that also makes me super excited, because I was always with my party and he was on the other hand and I am a party woman and that is why I was with Oscar Ivan, also convinced of Oscar Ivan's ability.

- But, seeing how things developed, did you really think that Oscar Iván Zuluaga could have fought an election against Gustavo Petro?

- I am very convinced of Oscar Ivan's ability as a statesman and that is why I supported him.

- Yes, but as they said about Álvaro Gómez, he could have been a great president but he was a terrible candidate, that's why he never won, the consensus, I think, is that Oscar Ivan really wouldn't have succeeded either

- The problem is the political situation, I am going to tell you the truth, I belong to a party that, unfortunately, has been unable to communicate and has been caricatured and many of us who belong to the party have also been caricatured, something very special happens to me and that is that he usually thinks very different from me when he meets me, because we have created a kind of resistance and even hatred towards the party and those of us who are part of it, unfortunately that is something that Oscar Iván had to bear; also everything that happened in that campaign that Santos cleverly stole, because they had him for a long time he subjudged, so there are many conditions.

I love Oscar Iván very much, I know of his ability, but unfortunately, and in that I think he had an act of greatness and wisdom, when he saw the result of the consultation he said: “I'm retiring”, also because I think he too felt the country.

In this election, what Colombia needs is a healer, someone capable of reducing so much violence, so much hatred, so many divisions, that many are right, but others are not. Here too, there is a hatred, which I would say is generated, injected, that has no rational basis, because ideological differences are supposed to be bridged in democracy, but here's something else behind it, and I think Federico has that ability and Lara does too.

People have gone from apathy to antipathy, people are angry, people are acting with anger; here there has been a very hard process of deconstruction of Colombian history, people don't know where we came from, they don't know what happened and anger is almost irrational, so I think Colombia needs someone who is able to put it to breath and to rethink ourselves, to rethink ourselves as a nation, to rethink what unites us, because in democracy the difference must be bridged.

- You have said that there is resistance in many sectors against the Democratic Center, could it not be that all this throwing Oscar Iván, knowing that he was not going to be president, to end up supporting Fico at the last minute was a plan by former President Uribe to prevent the rejection of Uribism from affecting Gutiérrez's candidacy and that Fico was it really always Uribe's?

- No, we didn't know who was going to win the poll, that wasn't so easy to calculate, because you get a lot of surprises in those polls and the difference between Oscar Ivan from the other candidates was abysmal, but there are several lessons left for reflection: the first is that one thing is Twitter and networks and others is real life, because in the networks María Fernanda won, unquestionably, and in the poll the big winner was Oscar Iván, that shows that one thing is networks and another is real life.

In addition, it makes me laugh because many people think that Uribe is like a Machiavelli who moves the chips of a great chess and everything goes as he plans it and that is not so; in fact, he and I clash a lot because I tell him: you are a general who does not command, please send. He lets things happen and he always says: is that you have to listen more, you have to listen more, you have to listen more, and sometimes he lets the processes be eternal and I hope one day to have the patience that he has, I don't have it, he waits and waits and, I have to admit that, sometimes, that waiting for him has saved us from making many mistakes, that it's true.

- You have acknowledged that you are very conservative and you are decidedly supporting Federico Gutiérrez, but people like the former Ombudsman Carlos Negret or the vice-presidential candidate Rodrigo Lara himself come from other currents and defend things that are not even close to the ideology of the Democratic Center. What will happen to the party's support if you come to power to make a presidency other than the one you want?

- I learned one thing from President Uribe and that is that the one who wins is the president, and you have to trust him and his judgment, he will govern in his own way. I am “goda” but I am not uncompromising and I, for example, was very happy with the appointment of Rodrigo Lara and I was very happy because I feel that Lara and Fico are citizens like most Colombians, because he has a life story very similar to that of many people in Colombia, because he has a reputation as incorruptible and I think that in this moment the country needs that; moreover, he is a person who does not harbor hatred in his heart, Rodrigo Lara, despite the difficulty of his life history, is a man without hatred, he is a quiet man.

A peasant once told me that you look people in the face, you know who you are, that you look people in the eye and you know who is who, and you look Lara in the eye and you know that he is a good man, so I am completely calm, I ask God a lot to enlighten them and give them three things that I learned since I was a child. ask because I believe that with that one governs a country, wisdom, to make decisions; courage, to do what it has to do, and compassion, and that is what I ask God to give them both, because Colombia today cannot make a leap into the void, but Colombia does have to make great changes, and they are going to be responsible for those changes, we can't keep stretching democracy, it can't stand us anymore, we have to make those changes, to regain legitimacy, governance, so that people can trust institutions again and, believe me, above how “goth” I am, I am patriot, I love this country very much and I just want the best to happen, and for them to do what they have to do.

- Let's talk about the suspicions of electoral fraud in the elections, how is it understood that traditional parties, including the Democratic Center, with whose support the registrar came into office, now say that Alexander Vega allied himself with the Historical Pact to manipulate the elections? Isn't that illogical?

- There are several things here, before the election, the one who said that there was going to be fraud was Petro, not us; we say afterwards that there may be fraud because of the evidentiary stock, because more than 300,000 juries voted twice, because we saw what happened to the juries at the tables, because there had never been such an abysmal difference, between the which records the E-14 and the final count, because we had too many complaints.

Here I want to be clear about something, we also chose Santos, and look what happened to us; so, for me, that we chose him does not say anything, but one does have to judge by the facts and the truth is that here the facts show that something terrible did happen in this electoral process, because they finally accredited many witnesses from some parties and very few from others, because there was no training of the juries, a lot of juries who didn't know how to fill the E-14s, one is struck that the party that shows up all the votes is the historical pact and that they said from the beginning there is going to be fraud and we are going to get so many votes and we are going to get 20 senators, they knew everything before the election was made. What seems strange to me is that they who were shouting fraud, fraud, then kept quiet.

- But do you think that the registrar allied with the Historical Pact to make a fraud for the benefit of petrianism?

- I don't know if he allied or not, but I do think that an investigation needs to be done; in addition, we have to investigate the official who manages IT, because he was a contractor for Indra in Colombia, that must also be explained, and something that may not be illegal, but it looks bad, the counting company meeting in Spain with one of the candidates to whom you have to count the votes, there is a conflict of interest, it is as if the judge meets in another country behind closed doors with the person he is judging, no one would see that well.

Democracy is not exhausted in electoral processes, but doubts or lack of transparency in electoral processes do terribly affect democracy.

This is not a conspiracy theory, I think we have to talk about a proven basis and here if there was fraud, very strange things happened here, in the counting and in the transmission of data, and things like this, for the first time in Medellín half of the tellers did not arrive, and Medellín was one of the last cities to upload the vote record.

To me, for example, in Bethlehem, 20 votes appeared at a table and then the registration was 2, not 20, there are too many things, one cannot talk about conspiracy from conjecture, you have to talk about proof, and we received many complaints from people who voted and do not see the voting record, from witnesses who had an E-14 record which then appears completely different, so I think that all the tests lead us to despite the fact that something very bad happened in these congressional elections.

- In these elections, former President Uribe chose not to run into Congress and that surely affected the party's vote. Is there a Democratic Center without Uribe?

- There has to be, because that's his dream. When the party was born, he always told me: we have to move from Uribe to Uribism and we have to move from Uribism to the Democratic Center, to make a body of doctrine that we have created in more than 40 years of politics translate into a party that can be a political vehicle for democracy, and, he insisted on us a lot, to do that we have to overcome the figure of Uribe, because finally, as the former president of Mexico Francisco Madero said, a party has to be as eternal as the parties it defends, political figures emerge in parties, but parties cannot depend on those figures, they have to overcome those figures and that is the desire of Former President Uribe, I don't think we've done his job, but we have to do it.

What do you think is the greatest danger if Gustavo Petro becomes president?

- I think there are several dangers: first, that he has hate speech and division that was exacerbated by his vice-presidential formula, with Francia Márquez; the second thing is, the model that he defends and which is described in his autobiographical book, is a model that has failed throughout the region, because it is a model that expropriates via taxes, because is a model that generates legal instability and frightens investment, and he has very strange ideas, for example, regarding pension issues, in the face of mining exploration and exploitation.

You always have to try to speak with the utmost respect about the container, but let's put it this way: you can't want milk and hate the cow, they like subsidies, they like royalties, but they don't like exploration or mining, they don't like oil, they don't like freedom of enterprise, so it's very difficult, because if you don't promote that, all you give out is misery.

I have studied very closely what has happened in Venezuela, what has happened in Argentina and I am seeing with pain what is happening in Chile and Peru, that people, too, with an idea of change, took the leap into the void and now we see what is happening, because they are figures who arrive with a model that frightens the investor.

One cannot oppose, for example, oil, ignoring that it is finally a sector that contributes a large percentage to GDP, to exports, which represents royalties, which is what is used to make roads, schools, hospitals. That is not the way, and the truth is that I am afraid, I am afraid of what might happen if he happens.

- But we cannot deny that dependence on oil is something that the whole world is discussing, we cannot depend forever on oil

- Yes, but you can't say no more oil when it doesn't have the capacity to substitute, you have to be sensible about this; moreover, Colombia is one of the countries with the cleanest energy matrix because most of the energy in Colombia is produced through hydroelectric power plants, but it is also one of the countries that has made the most progress in transition energy.

Of course we have to switch to cleaner energy, but one cannot be blind to reality, today there is no capacity for substitution, so one cannot decide at one stroke no more oil when you do not have the capacity to replace it.

One thing is the future we want and another is what we can, one has to try to tune in to the two things, neither can we stay in the comfort zone and not make the changes, we have to make them, but we must do them gradually and sensibly.

- You have spoken a lot about how you are concerned about the anger that you see in a certain sector of the population, will not the origin of that anger be because we live in an unjust, inequitable and racist country?

- I think that Colombia has gradually overcome differences, and has been understanding that we are all Colombians, I think that the great damage that a new wave of hate speech has been doing to it, not only in Colombia, is a global discourse, is to want to divide countries into small ghettos: black, white, LGBTI, straight, businessmen, workers... and I think that is very harmful, we should tune in that we are all Colombians and we should all have the same rights and duties.

Obviously, when there are people who are much more vulnerable, it is necessary to raise them so that they are in equity. Equity is not the same to everyone, but to everyone according to their needs. You can't give the same treatment to a child to an elderly person as to someone who can work, but I think it hurts Colombia to return to the hate speech and division that we have tried to overcome with quite a lot of lidia.

I'm a woman, and I hate the “feminazi” speech. I hate the speech that all the time is saying that this is a macho, patriarchal society, with a glass roof, that women cannot... I hate that, and I have always said that I was born in a home where we are two women and a man and in my house there was never a difference in whether I was a woman or a man, the prize was for the one I worked the most, for the one who studied the most, whether it was male or female it was circumstantial, and the same happens with being black or white or being from one department or another, they are fortuitous subjects, it is that you do not choose what color you are born or what your gender will be or what your race will be, that is fortuitous, what we have to do is that all Colombians, regardless of any consideration, have opportunities to develop their potential and be happy, but it hurts to be constantly making a difference and filling people with anger.

But the reality is that the poorest population in Colombia is black, the poorest regions are mostly black, there is a historical institutional oblivion in those communities, that is a fact

Yeah, but let's start crossing data. She is black and most live in the Pacific, and is concentrated in departments where there is more political corruption and where there is more voting buying and selling.

I believe that most phenomena do not have a single cause, but have many causes; then, when you begin to cross the vast black population, you are poor, you are located in regions with violence, the presence of criminal structures and corruption, as is also undoubtedly that there are many poor whites in the communes of Medellín and the slopes of Bogota.

It seems very problematic to me to look at it from that perspective, I think we need to have a much more holistic look to understand what the reasons are and not start to stigmatize.

- It is not stigmatization, but it is not by chance that the poorest communities in the country are those with a black majority

- But what happens there: corruption and the presence of criminal structures

- Yes, and lack of state presence

- Yes, that this lack of presence of the State is not exclusively from Colombia, unfortunately the history of Latin America shows that we have more territory than state and all spaces with a state vacuum are disputed by criminal structures, that does not only happen there, it also happens in border areas that are not black, but which have the same status: corruption, the presence of criminal structures and the absence of State presence.

So, instead of pointing out as marmosets, we have to find greater causes to overcome poverty: we need to have greater control of territory and state presence, we have to fight corruption and we have to end criminal structures, regardless of whether the population is black, mestizo, white, indigenous, these areas are those with the greatest poverty.

- Senator, you are chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, what are we going to do with Venezuela?

- I have been working for more than 17 years with the Venezuelan opposition and I think that a big mistake was made there from the beginning, and that was to make people believe that this was a political problem, left and right and socialism of the 21st century, and no, this is a judicial issue.

All the countries of Latin America signed the democratic charter and in Venezuela there is no democracy because the elections were stolen, because there are political prisoners, because there are violations of human rights and international law. The other issue is that there is usurping power by a criminal structure that has dedicated itself to terrorism, drug trafficking and housing these organizations.

I think one has to try to provide a solution without ingratiating oneself with the perpetrator. Colombia does not have to recognize as a government a criminal structure that is usurping power in Venezuela. I think that what is being done is important, which is to seek to change the perspective on the subject of Venezuela, because the problem of Venezuela is not a political problem, it is a problem of hemispheric security, because there are Hezbollah cells there.

In Colombia, we still have a very big problem with the FARC and the ELN, and Venezuela stopped being a strategic rear to being the center of operations. Today 70% of the ELN is in Venezuela and operates from there and many of the leaders of COCE, the two major FARC structures, Gentil Duarte and Nueva Marquetalia operate directly from Venezuela; Maduro and the leadership are requested for extradition by a court in the Southern District of New York for crimes of drug trafficking, terrorism , arms trafficking and others, then the problem is that we have not understood that this is a judicial issue, a problem of hemispheric security and that should be the treatment. It's not a political problem.

The other big mistake is that when we talk about people leaving Venezuela they talk about migrants, they are not migrants, they are refugees, the status and conditions are different, the migrant is the one who leaves their country looking for better opportunities, the refugee leaves because Venezuela is unviable, because there is no food there, there is no medicine, no there is employment, there are no guarantees of security, and not having clarified this from the beginning leads to the fact that, for example, despite the situation of Venezuelans being more serious than that of the Syrians, the international community supports the Syrians with millions of dollars and they do not do it with Venezuelans and we have a real difficulty there, here is more than two million Venezuelans and we do not have the economic capacity to absorb them and for them to have a positive insertion as they should have, and in part the big mistake was not having talked about refugees and not migrants since the beginning.

The other question we have to ask ourselves is what is the use of the international community and international organizations, because they are always late for everything. They arrived in Rwanda and Burundi when they had already killed a million machete, in Ukraine who knows when they will arrive, in Venezuela they will see, Nicaragua who knows. The question that we should ask ourselves in the background is what the international organizations responsible for defending democracy, freedoms are for, when in the 21st century we are seeing dictatorships and things as atrocious as what Putin does to Ukraine, like what Noriega does to Nicaragua, like what Maduro does to Venezuela, where are they?

- Finally, how long are we going to continue to hold the lie of an interim president in Venezuela when it is known that Guaido is not in charge of anything?

- Finally, Venezuelans have to solve that, we cannot impose on them

But we support the story that Venezuela had another president who doesn't really govern

The United States was the first to do it for a real issue, and that is that this has a legal order. It is assumed that when there is a lack of the president, as was the case in Maduro's case, because, not recognizing the elections he could not continue as president, the Presidency was assumed by the one who at that time was the president of the Assembly, Juan Guaidó, constitutionally who was the interim president, he; what is the great difficulty, supposes that it was interim, not eternal and interim was given until free elections were called, as that guarantee does not exist there, and that is what is constitutionally and legally. What is the problem? That the international community has not done its task and that the opposition has been inferior, because I also have to say it, I who work with them, internal differences are a problem, I have said it a thousand times, when there is no democracy there are no parties, and they are still in a ball between parties, for which parties if there are not even democracy, when there is no democracy, there are only those who are with the dictator and those who are against the dictatorship, period, parties are worth eggs, they have not understood that and many, moreover, are Trojan horses that work for the regime infiltrating the opposition.

So that situation is not resolved because the international community is happy with slimy diplomacy and internally they have not had the capacity.

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