Exclusivo: por primera vez habla el ministro de Educación, Daniel Rojas

0:00 In the WU the report Colonel, because the long- awaited interview, the first well- known interview Minister of Education who has just appointed the President of the Republic, Minister who has been spattered by a tremendous controversy. Well, because of issues of your past on social media that you don' t forget, you don' t forget or erase. Daniel his guest, good morning July. This is the Colonel report. Those who know Daniel Rojas define him as a person of exceptional intelligence and a very rapid ability to adapt to any circumstance. The truth is that his appointment in the Ministry of National Education has raised a huge controversy over the posting of his messages on social networks plagued with expressions or feces, his previously x account called Twitter, shows successive are against government detractors and media, among others. Some people say that the Minister of Education is rude because his brothers have called Mayor Claudia Lopez to forgive me badly.

1:14 The same epithet has been applied to former Mayor Enrique Peñalosa and Blue journalists He has tried hp but with all the letters to former President Alvaro Uribe and members of the national police. The softest expression he has used against a political counterdictor is that of pyroo, but this goes through the full range of possible rudeness. The reproach that some make is to point out that Daniel Rojas, the appointed Minister of Education, is a rude one, that the use of these expressions impoverishes public controversy and shows him as an intolerant in the face of dissent and that everything can be said, but respecting the human dignity of the contradictor. Another important source of criticism is that the new Minister of Education has no experience or training in the field of education. Rojas is an economist and has played a very prominent role as president of the special asset society. There are even detractors of yours. They recognize that significant progress has been made in cleaning up the inventory of the entity that manages the assets confiscated from the Mafia and that many of these properties were intended to be recast in the midst of corruption. Today they are available for glary reform or even for educational purposes.

2:36 The newspaper, the spectator in today' s editorial, entitled Minister of Education for Conspiracy, points out Auro Comillas Rojas, who had been performing a recognized task as president of the special assets society, arrives without much experience in the education sector to occupy a position where the Gabierno failed the first two years. Close Comillas, add the viewer. That' s why Rojas' s designation is strange. He has no weight in the education guild, no more experience, no knowledge of his bold proposals and leadership skills. He closes Comillas and concludes that President Petro is dismissing people with specific training in the educational area to choose a bishop of his for his loyalty and not for his ability to manage a very sensitive sector for the government program. Many voices have heard about this controversial appointment, much less that of the main protagonist of the issue, José Daniel Rojas Medellín, the Minister of Education, who has agreed to deliver his first statements since his appointment here in the report. Mr Minister, good morning.

3:52 Good morning to Daniel and all the OLEU listeners. Minister, thank you so much for accepting this frank conversation I want to start by asking you about your on- line Twitter messages. You believe that is the way to express the discrepancy with political contradictors. Well, clearly they have been privileged for the criticism of some messages that at some point in my life I put in the frame with the context of indignation as a citizen, since, therefore, I had no dignity either within the Government or within any office of representation. We are talking about the times, the social outbreak, the times when he was simply a citizen with, of course, a link to social and political activism.

4:55 But, to answer your question, it is clearly not the way to answer it. And, as in other triunes, since I' m a civil servant, you can still be loyal to my principles, but of course, using the language you owe when you have this kind of dignity. Yes Minister, for some people think that this is not just a matter of good manners, but that this verbal strife is a sign of intolerance and inability to argue with arguments. Let me read you a part of the Spectator' s editorial on the subject I open Comillas. President Petro says that to make that criticism is to concentrate on aesthetic forms, but it goes far beyond that.

5:41 The X account of Rojas shows a person who loves the style of the wineries, unable to give complex debates, with empathy entrenched in their radicalism and lack of intellectual rigurosity. That the new Minister expresses himself in a similar way to the twitter wineries that celebrate so much in the House of Nariño, is not a coincidence, but a demonstration of the way in which the President likes politics to be done. What you answer to that criticism would be the Minister. No. I greatly respect the criticisms of the press about my appointment and on the basis of that respect. My answer is as follows. I am not very clear about what reference the editorial makes and many of our critics, when they name wineries, let' s say I could intuit that it is the feeling that the government has with the popular expression of the country and that it is so difficult to understand it and it is so difficult to have an acceptance of the popular demands of the country in some part of the power, at least that they have no other way of defining them, but wineries. And clearly, we do have a feeling. We have a coincidence with what the

7:11 popular sectors in Colombia express, because we represent them, because they come, because that is our origin. And I don' t want to say with this because the debate has centered there that the popular sectors of the country only know how to say rudeness, no but we do have a colombianity, if we have a culture, if we have some ways to see and understand the reality of the country that has not been understood in the circles of power and that' s why the difficulty of understanding us And that' s why the epithet of wineries. On that basis, I think you may be right about publishing. We do represent that, of course, of course in criticism you will always have to go and look for the triunes. More or more times that I have put in my life as an activist or in my youth life or in my life of indignation, but it has not suddenly focused on other kinds of publications in which we have given all kinds of debates, arguing, programmatic debates. I went to the coordinator of the design of the presidential program and on that presidential program there was any kind of debate of all kinds, of technical type, of political type, in which we always argued, let ' s say we always had an argumentative space to give them clearly, because

8:45 the criticism will not go to seek such pronouncements. But we actually assumed it. We assumed it and so did we at the time when we accepted the presidency of the special asset companies. We accept and understand that we have appointments limitations, but we also know that we have many capabilities of forming larger teams and of being able to assume the data that we are given. That one. Minister, allow me to return for a moment to the issue of wineries, as it has arisen here, which are not only attributable to sectors that sympathize with the Government, but to sectors that disagree with the Government. What when you talk about wineries, is spoken of from constant and permanent coordinated operations in social networks with the purpose of insulting, criminalizing, in some cases or, in the other, canceling contents that are not at some point favorable to the interests, for example, of Uribism in some cases and in other cases, of the supporters of President Petro. This coordinated action is what has been called wineries and it turns out that some exponents of these activists on social networks are handled very successfully using these crude vulgar expressions. That' s why they identify these expressions of theirs with those of some of the people we don' t have to name, but who have become part of their character. The use of this type of violent expression verbally and that is very successful in social

10:18 networks cn BACOLIX. Well, I don' t coordinate with anyone in my publications more than with myself, and maybe that' s the mistake. But if that is the definition of wineries, then my winery is myself, because really, even when it links, because I am currently still President of the AVEs, we have a communications team. The publications in my personal account I only coordinate with myself and, of course, sometimes filled with emotions. They make or make triunes or make publications that, like any human being, they express feelings that at that moment I am having. It is understood, Minister, obviously, that the expression of feeling can always be done in words that are less intemperate. Let' s move on to another topic. Several voices, including those of educational experts, have expressed concern that you lack academic training and specific experience in the sector. What enables you, Minister, to make the holder of a portfolio that is decisive for the government program of President Petro sol Bueno, the education sector. When we talk about the dulcative community or

11:48 the education sector, we would have to link not only those who call themselves experts, but also all the pro- sectors of society that make up the educational community, among them the student movement, among them the teachers, among them the same managers of academic institutions and institutions linked to the education sector. In this type of expression I have received the greatest of the supports and I want to take advantage of the space to thank you for the affability that within the student movement and within the academic movement aggregated and even within many of the rectors of public universities with which I have already had the opportunity to communicate, as they have spoken to me another type of criticism of people who can be called experts in the education sector. I' ll split them in two.

12:52 Those who come to the attack to dominate and notice that it is paradoxical that those who call themselves educational experts come to him until they dominate, that is to say, to attack the person and not the argument, like the case of Mr Sergio Fajardo or the chaso, Mr Alejandro Gaviria, to whom I can have the greatest respect, but you could not answer anything because they have come to criticize me, because at some point I used rudeness. Like anyone not using lotteries, but let' s also say more aimed at questioning me as people. Like another kind of criticism. I have just received a letter from the professor of Nabonilla, whom I admire, although we have ideological differences, from the Secretary of Education of Bogotá, a letter in which I find some valuable elements to discuss and to put in the exercise of my work many of the questions that she puts in the public debate. So I make that difference to the former, because I prefer not to pay much attention to them, and to the latter, because I believe that in them I find potrultive criticisms on which we can draw up a national agreement on education. You'

14:24 re going to sit down with some of those critics who, for example, appoint Dr Nabonilla. Professor Julián de Subiría has also made respectful criticisms of his experience. You would be interested in meeting them and listening to them, of course. Of course, it is of my greatest interest, because I not only recognize them as valuable people in the education process, who have a lot to contribute to the country and who, in the framework of the difference, I insist that education can be that great nodal point of national agreement and well for that they turn out to be three valuable people and I would just love to take up the job of inviting them not only to listen to them, because it is one thing to listen to them, but to link them also in the construction of public policy and let us say the direction that the Ministry should take, but also I have the same as societies tell them, that special ones. I am firmly convinced that I require a team of experts and people with a background, but also the political awareness of change that the Government programme indicates to us. So welcome the dialogue, not only so that I insist that we have a crux of words, but also a dialogue with which it specifies specific things for the development of education in Colombia. Mr Minister, we live in a time when people make quick and sometimes unsubstantiated associations. But

15:58 I do one of those reasonings. You were a member of Senator Gustavo Bolívar ' s legislative work unit. Senator Gustavo Bolívar is a person who publicly supported the work of the front lines, which are, let' s say, groups of young people who were during the social uprising, throughout this movement, for let' s say, in the first line it is worth the redundancy of resistance to the action of the security forces. You believe that these young people on the front line are going to have some role in your Ministry.

16:41 Well, I also worked with Senator Wolsonarios, for example, who is a man who comes from representing the student workers' struggle in the Seine and, of course, we have ideological affinities as much as a taster as Willson with the President of the Republic in which to understand that there is a sixth youth in Colombia who, as he expressed them in the social salido, feel that they have no kind of opportunities. The so- called ninis, who the banners they used to fly said we no longer have anything to lose, that is, we are not afraid to lose our lives, because we have nothing to lose, we have no future. Just as a journalist who associates me with Rodrigo' s film of no future told me, because that' s the guy perhaps has for journalist reason This is the kind of sensitivity we have for Colombian youth and, of course, in the context of the social explosion.

17:45 Those young people who no longer felt that their lives in Colombia had any meaning at all, because, however, at the time they received a response to the State, they were worth it, because they had no qualms about confronting violence with violence. I do believe that for them, in this government that is said to be changing, we must have the urgency to present to them an alternative, the alternative of being able to have a life plan and to be able to channel their longings within the framework of the right to education, the right to work and, of course, to form free citizenships, as we constantly say, the freedom to choose, to form, to choose a productive concreteness for their lives or, of course, to choose then other paths that would lead them, because perhaps to the loss of freedom, if they so said, but at least that they have the freedom to choose and that within that choice, education is an open door for them. It is true that his main mission in the Ministry is to produce mobilizations in the universities in favor of the government. We like active citizenships, but let them mobilize that experience, but not in favor of the Government and in that very drastic

19:22 today. I would like a student movement to participate in decision- making, but participate constructively and participate in consultation. Is that, for example, now is that it tells me of my main challenge because my main time would be to open up its university students and the experiences that we have already acquired in terms of achieving infrastructure for the expansion of university coverage. It can help us in that sense that they are mobilized to tell us where, how the new university networks are opened, what are the programs that demand the most, how far and how we could get in the drafting of the law. This is your task of education, which is a debt that we have as a state since ninety- four. What reform should be like, that is, a proactive mobilization, which is not how mobilizations in the streets are popularly understood, protesting and in the context of the confrontations. We cannot find spaces for democratic demolishment so that there can be a youthful constituent power. And understand this and, please, that those who hear us can build. I am not saying that from here we are going to try a constituent national assembly or a change in the Constitution. No. What we want is for us to deepen democracy and for the sovereign and, in this case, university citizenship or the student

20:53 community, to have an impact on the elaboration of public policies. Mr Minister, you speak of youthful constituent power and recently, following the controversies that have arisen with the election of rector of the National University, there has been talk of university constituent. What exactly is a university constituent that and what role does that have in President Petro' s proposals, which remain unclear to many Oxante people. Well, that is an expression that has emerged from the same student mobilization and we, therefore, respect that autonomy clearly with the expressions of the President of the Republic and for us that is wonderful news as long as we can articulate the student movement for the purposes of the Government. However, as I say, it is a proposal that is in the heart of the student movement and remains very bad to me And more now as an official, as Minister of Education, you can appropriate me or introduce me to the discussions that belong to the student movement. So that would have to be asked of them.

22:19 Let' s say what the ultimate purpose is, but what they and the general public can count on is that they will find in the Ministry the availability for dialogue and propositional action, just as we have every willingness to do so with our critics, for, of course, also with the student movement. Yes, Minister, you will understand that this thing you just said is not easy to interpret. You talk about articulating the student movement for the purposes of the government. What exactly does that mean? Using students' capacity to mobilize and protest in favor of government reforms, for example, using students' ability to propose than students. They' re not just mobilizing. Students have schedules. They' ve built for the last few years, not forever, since I' ve known a student moment, a student moment. It' s always been purposeful. Protests against successive reforms to the 30th law. I ' m sorry to have a counter- proposal behind it and there was always a willingness to dialogue, to use that capacity of something and that propositional capacity of those who know the national education system better and to whom we owe ourselves as public officials in the education sector. Believe me Daniel, and this and let' s say this I want to be very incisive. We want to

23:55 sit down and build, with all the actors, on a purpose that is beyond the country, that is, education, but without giving up on the purposes of the Government' s programme, which are very clear. Extend coverage, improve quality and, of course, bring the guarantee of the right to its May maximum expression. Expanding coverage and improving quality, Minister, what do you think of private education. It is possible and desirable to establish agreements between the Government and private educational institutions so that young people with limited economic resources have access, for example, to private colleges and universities. It is likely and possible, but not enough. Immersion of the market in the guarantee of the right may help us to solve part of the problem, but the right, as of its genuine expression, must be guaranteed with the State as guarantor of last resort, or even of first instance in terms of preponderance. So, welcome to the private sector, but the public sector has to roast because markets have flaws and because the market has, overwhelmingly, a search for utility,

25:27 or let' s say, a consideration. So, in that sense, because those sectors that are excluded by the market, as they tend to be marginalized in the competitive logic of the market. That' s our criticism of programs like being pilo pays, but, of course, welcome, lends, let' s say the private provision of the right, but our people don ' t understand, I mean, that we have to establish equality in access to educational opportunities, so that we don' t end up with poor education for the poor and privileged education for the most favored sectors, and I believe that in that we can achieve a great national agreement. Minister, I want to ask you for your predecessors what opinion you deserve from Alejandro Gaviría' s performance in the education portfolio. Well, I, at that time, was super focused on my work and I cannot make a very thorough evaluation of the performance of former ministers Alejandro Gaviria, beyond the personal, in what I think we had a cordial and kind relationship and what I could see in the meetings

27:00 or with advice from Minnesonos that could be present and in which the President of Gustavo Petro always expressed a disagreement that the additional resources obtained in this Government have been prioritized to increase coverage in others have been redirected to keep other obligations to that purpose that for the Government and for the government program were priority. In other words, I believe that the Minister did not understand very well the purposes of this Government by preferring to use those additional resources and invest them. Or not even invest. That could not be called investment. Use them to pay off debts left by the past government rather than prioritize the student community' s need to increase coverage. There is a delay and that, then, is something that I agree with the President of the Republic, because that was problematic because ultimately we failed to respect the youth who elected us mostly and the Minister did not understand it and took advantage of his question to ponder, respect, value, applaud the work of Minister Aurora Vergara, my companion. We both lead the joint. As soon as we win with the past government, we

28:30 barely win the election. I met them there not only as people, but also the professional and ethical qualities that the sector has. I would very much like Aurora to follow me, not continue to accompany me at this stage of the Ministry, because I think she is a very valuable woman and, in addition, with the political clarity that this exarte, very kind, very considerate, the words of her fferents or predecessors, requires. But what did she do that you would not do, Minister, Well, not that is the most difficult of the questions you have asked me, because I have considered the work of the Minister as impeccable work. So, I don' t see any mistakes in your career as Minister, of course, like anyone else, but maybe a little bit to make a little change to your question and be able to answer something. What I would do all of a sudden is maybe speed up a little bit and I think it' s already paving the way.

29:49 It has made it a very, very important task to pave the way for speeding up the process of opening new university campuses and leaving it to a certain extent a little easy to achieve. Then, I know that with the help of her and with many other friends who have already expressed their desire to collaborate with us. We will therefore be able to do so thanks to the appointed Minister of Education, Daniel Rojas, a 37- year- old economist. From next week, he will be in charge of the country' s education. This was today' s Colonel report. Thank you very much.