Fernando Carrillo Flórez: “Journalism is the thermometer of the quality of democracy” | Culture | EUROtoday

In the 1990 legislative elections in a Colombia immersed in violence and with the best homicide price on the planet, yet another was added, unofficially, to the six ballots deliberate to elect the corresponding public officers. The so-called “seventh ballot”—promoted by college students and distributed via the streets of the nation—proposed the creation of a Constituent Assembly to reform the Constitution, in pressure since 1886. Although the quantity of people that forged that seventh poll within the polls was by no means identified. , the target of that different vote was met. Two months later, within the presidential elections, greater than 5 million Colombians—near 86% of those that went to the polls—voted, in a binding session, in favor of the Assembly, which a 12 months later reformed the nation’s Constitution. One of the promoters of that poll and who later turned one of many 70 constituents with voice and vote of that choose group was Fernando Carrillo Flórez, former lawyer and former minister of Colombia and vp of PRISA, the publishing group of EL PAÍS. And it was exactly the reminiscence of that episode that was one of many predominant motivations that prompted him to jot down his new e-book. Without worry: Defending democracy from democracy (Debate), which he offered this Thursday on the Casa América in Madrid.

“Our generation had to live through the most violent and dramatic events of recent years in Colombia. We lived in a failed state and that began to change. We made one of the most progressive Constitutions in Latin America and we brought Colombia to political modernity,” Carrillo recalled in a chat with the director of W Radio Colombia, Julio Sánchez Cristo, on the presentation occasion, which the director additionally attended. from this newspaper, Pepa Bueno. But after what the writer considers “an epiphany, a magical parenthesis that no one expected,” the democratic degradation in his nation has not stopped. “The policy was the same again and began to fail,” the previous minister acknowledged. In the e-book he offered he makes a prognosis of the present threats and goals to search out some options.

Of these issues, in response to what he stated, those that concern him essentially the most are polarization and extremism. “What the networks do is promote confrontation, and that is the greatest threat to democracy. They try to convince us that it is a problem of left versus right,” stated Carrillo. That, together with the weakening of establishments and extended corruption, has managed, in response to the e-book’s writer, to extend populist narratives that erode belief in democracy. “Now authoritarianism is tolerated and in reality the responsibility does not lie with democracy, it must be passed on to politics, to bad politicians,” he stated.

The former minister has recognized misinformation as the primary explanation for the polarization by which we dwell and, subsequently, what he defended most throughout the occasion was the worth of high quality journalism within the struggle towards faux information. “The thermometer of democratic quality is good journalism. It is the first line of defense of democracy. Global authoritarianism knows that and that is why they shoot him,” he mirrored on the finish of his dialog with Sánchez Cristo. And though his e-book dedicates a deep reflection to Colombia, what occurs in his nation, because the director of W Radio has defined, serves for instance for the remainder of the nations in Latin America. “Where it says Colombia in the book, change the name to any other country in the region and sell it everywhere,” Sánchez Cristo really helpful to the writer of the essay, earlier than suggesting, within the face of Carrillo’s laughing refusal, that that in sure sectors of Colombian politics it’s mentioned: “Are we not listening to the words of a presidential candidate?”

The occasion ended, after the dialog between Carrillo and Sánchez Cristo, with a panel on world democracy and Latin America moderated by the Cadena Ser journalist and collaborator of this newspaper, Aida Bao and with the participation of Erika Rodríguez, director of the Foundation Carolina; Narciso Casado, director of Relations with Ibero-America of the Spanish Conference of Business Organizations (CEOE); Eloy García, professor on the Complutense University of Madrid; and Ignacio Corlazzoli, supervisor of the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF) for Europe, Asia and the Middle East. A chat by which the democratic challenges had been delved into, with the views of every of the sectors that the audio system represented and linking the concepts of the e-book with Spanish and Latin American present occasions.