Two prominent columnists for this newspaper, David Escobar and Jorge Giraldo, recently referred to an unprecedented conversation about our present and future. The exercise of We have to talk, Colombia, by who developed it and by its nature.
The best universities, public and private, and the best think tank in the country, the Fundación de Ideas por la Paz, carried out, congratulations, such an exercise in deliberative democracy over the country. From rigorous methodologies of citizen conversation.
Little exercise, because in general how we are doing as a society is associated with perception, photography, of how each one of us is doing. We need to talk, Colombia it is not a perception survey: it is a rigorous, broad and relevant conversation, from many and diverse voices, about what we care about and what to do collectively for a nation to live with hope and without fear. The results are encouraging in being and very demanding in doing, from the perspective of a more dignified Colombia.
The essential results of the conversations are interpreted very well by the columnists. D. Escobar, director of Comfama, who is faithful to the principle of optimism as a moral obligation of good leaders, reads the exercise in his virtues. We Colombians believe in our Constitution. We do not believe —unrelated to our neighboring countries— that it is necessary to “reconstitute the homeland”. J. Giraldo, a pragmatic intellectual from Eafit, agreeing with Escobar, goes further and asks himself: who will take up all those conversations to turn them into a public agenda and management?
The two were very cautious in what to do, given their high intellectual and institutional capacity for social influence.
In times as difficult as those of the pandemic, Eafit University, leader of the initiative, and Comfama invited me to talk about society and postcovid. The result of this exercise was a mandate: the times demand moving from public conversations to public decisions. Not only think, but be an active part of a transformation from knowledge. What reinforcement Eafit and Comfama find to lead citizen agendas for a better country in the talks of We need to talk, Colombia! They have the capacity to convene the rest of the universities, think tanks, savings banks, foundations, so that, surpassing the threshold of scientific dissemination, they connect with the minds and agendas of public decision makers.
Promoting the construction of local citizen agendas, as scenarios of deliberative democracy, where rights and duties are equally important; schools or programs for young people, where the conception and ethics of participation in the destinies of society are renewed; fostering citizen laboratories of social innovation; encouraging cooperation networks or strategic nodes of civil society to solve them; giving a special space to culture and the arts; strengthening funds and promoters in this dimension, given their ability to build society, as we saw in the pandemic.
Turn all the institutions mentioned into active mediators of a broad prosocial movement, for citizen agendas for a better country