Populism and rubella | THE VIEWER

In the mid-1960s, before there was an effective vaccine against rubella, there was an epidemic of this virus in the world. The illness caused by rubella is generally mild, especially in children, and in half of the cases there are no symptoms at all. Rubella has, however, a very serious manifestation if a pregnant woman is infected in the first months of pregnancy. When a fetus contracts rubella through the mother, it can come into the world with terrible defects: blindness, deafness, cardiac malformations, cerebral palsy, cognitive disability… For this reason, before an effective vaccine was developed (in the year 69 ), the doctors advised that ―if there were, for example, cases of rubella in the neighborhood― the girls should be exposed to the disease, so that they would be immunized at once, and thus not run the risk of being infected later, during the pregnancy.

Populism is the childhood disease of nations. Against populism there is no known vaccine. When neighboring countries fall ill with populism, the country itself is not immune. Populism is a virus that must be experienced first-hand in order to feel exactly what it produces. Since there is no vaccine or treatment, the sooner the disease is suffered, the better for the country that suffers it. Colombia is destined, face or seal, to live the next four years under a populist regime, either right-wing (Rodolfo Hernández) or left-wing (Gustavo Petro).

The surveys say that the majority of old people prefer the engineer; they also say that most young people prefer Petro. This corresponds to the inclinations of each age: for the old, order is more important than equality; for young people the priority is the second. The old believe more in merit and rewarded effort; young people prefer that everyone be given the same regardless of ability or effort. For old people, free access for all to university means little. Young people are not too concerned about retirement pensions losing value at the end of life.

Colombia cannot be proud that a century of non-populist governments has produced a great democratic, cultured and developed country. In that sense, we deserve the virus of populism, and by H or by P, we are going to experience it. Nor can it be said that in 200 years of republican life we ​​have not achieved anything. Slavery was abolished; there is freedom of the press; illiteracy, maternal and infant mortality decreased; today many more people enjoy drinking water and health care than half a century ago; even the homicide rates per 100,000 inhabitants (horrendous as they remain) are much lower today than they were in the 1980s and 1990s. But the levels of poverty are shameful; child malnutrition, unacceptable; the quality of public education, disastrous.

Populism offers us to solve these problems as if by magic. One is going to hoe the corrupt in Vichada; the other is going to give employment and a state salary to everyone. One is going to manage the State as if it were a construction company, with a manager foreman; the other is going to have an enlightened messiah who will distribute subsidies to the poorest and if he doesn’t have enough money he will print $100,000 bills at full speed.

This time we are not free from the virus of populism. It may be more or less serious than other political illnesses that we have suffered (developmentalism, security statute, states of siege, complicity with paramilitarism, extreme protectionism, neoliberalism, etc.). The worst thing about populism is that it tends to be a long and difficult disease to cure. I don’t think it will last a single presidential term. Childhood diseases are usually more complicated when they are suffered in adulthood.

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