¿Quién es, o quiénes son el pueblo?

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I' m Roberto Pombo. Welcome
to my questions, an average rush program

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sponsored by KFAM, family compensation box. The people are an ethereal concept that

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is difficult to define and that is
why the politicians have been so hands-

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on who the people are. The
people are always right for this chapter.

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We spoke with journalist María Elvira Samper, with the director of the Democracy Studies

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Group of the University of Rosario,
Jean Basset, with the House Representative,

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David Rasero, and with Senator Humberto
de la Calle, I am Roberto Pombo,

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and this is chapter eighty- three
of my questions welcome. Within the

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fundamental questions and questions of humanity is
the existence of God. For some it

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is not a possibility, but a
resounding fact. If you do not believe

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in God by mere exercise, suppose
for an instant that there is now what

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you believe God wants from us.
The interpretations and answers are multiple, not

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to say infinite. It depends on
which sacred book you read or even which

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verse or chapter you read. The
answer can change and is that, while

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there are some commandments, at least
in Christianity, their interpretations are several.

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But let' s go to the
Bible, let' s do the exercise

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of seeing what God wants, what
directions he gives. In most cases we

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read your instructions through someone else.
What the Book of Jeremiah says he told

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him, or what Abakuk says he
responded to him through a vision, or

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what Abdias says he told the people
of Edom that he had said to him

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and so let us think for a
moment about the Shabbat, the day when

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God commands the human to rest and
sanctify him. The guide is not rest.

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The bat appears in the Bible and
the Torah. However, Catholics and

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Jews make a different interpretation of God' s indications. Or go to Islam.

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This religion has the Sharia, a
book that is based on the Koran

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and that is something like the moral
and legal framework of that religion. This

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book establishes a path for moral life, but not a set of laws,

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in particular, so its interpretation is
rather lax and has been the subject of

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debate for a long time. I
also have in mind the use of the

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word of God that has been made
to justify atrocities such as the hitmen who

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pray their bullets, or like the
Holy Inquisition, which perceived and tortured scientists

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and prominent figures in the name of
faith and martyred the so- called witches.

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God' s word is rarely direct
and concrete. That is why the

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phrase a little exculpatory that says God' s ways are mysterious. However,

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God’ s word, despite its
lack of clarity, is deley in many

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cases. So there is an ancient
Latin expression that was coined centuries ago.

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Box Populi, Box Day. The
voice of the people is the voice of

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God to refer to a sacred command. On that basis political systems have grown

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or at least democracies, the most
popular system or at least on paper in

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almost every country of the world,
as almost everyone learns in the College,

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that democracy is the power or regime
of the people. Let' s say

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it means people and crates, which
means power. I am not going to

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review what democracy is or how it
was born, but it has to be

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said that that people who participated in
democracy had some limits. It excluded women,

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foreigners, slaves, and was only
considered to be citizens, men over

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the age of twenty, children of
Athenian father and mother. Since then,

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this concept of people has been extended
until the people have listened to each other.

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All of us have the power as
soon as we are grouped together as

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a group with similar characteristics. However, the concept remains vague or broad,

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as God’ s word has thought
to whom politicians and academics refer. When

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they refer to the people, it
comes to mind, for example, in

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the Gettinsburg speech, one of the
most important given by the American provocateur Abraham

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Lincoln, and which closes with the
phrase to Brocomillas and that the government of

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the people, by the people and
for the people will not disappear from the

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face of the earth. I'
m closing Comillas. In his famous narrow

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speech, Simon Bolivar repeats the village
about thirty- four times. But don

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' t go that far. The
Charter of the United Nations begins with its

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preamble, as we the peoples of
the United Nations say. And, if

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we look at a more local case, just beginning our political constitution, the

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one of the ninety- one article
three tells Borocomillas resides exclusively in the people

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from which public power emanates. The
people exercise it directly or through their representatives

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in accordance with the terms established by
the Constitution. I' m closing Comillas.

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This is perhaps the most open and
most used word in politics, always

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spoken with a certain mysticism and solemnity, but perhaps the most iconic phrase that

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best captures what has become the concept
of the people. It was told by

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the murdered liberal politician Jorge Liez.
The gaitan personally leaves there' s a

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bologna that sticks to me, because
it' s still like this. The

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randa, the gift. The interpretations
of the phrase are several, especially if

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we stick to representative democracy, because
a country is headed by a congressional politician

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mayor governor or president to lead on
his behalf, because he sees reflected in

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that person his will. So,
if the leaders and politicians represent the people

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and their will, the decisions made
by a politician in the name of his

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votes are justified. I looked for
Senator Humberto from the street to help me

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answer these questions, and this he
told me at the beginning. Democracy was

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direct democracy. The Greeks gathered in
the agora and there we made the decisions.

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But since that became impossible, things
became more complex, more difficult.

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Representative democracy is emerging. Then the
people intervene through some representatives. Now the

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validity of that representation is not questioned
in what we call liberal democracies. There

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are basically two systems on the value
or mandatory or non- binding nature of

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people' s decisions. In some
countries, the representative, that is,

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the congressman, has to obey the
directives of his voters. In other places

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it is said that the congressman seeks
the common good, but he is the

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one who judges that it is the
common good and makes his decisions freely.

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But in any case, within democracies, what Congress decides, as a representative

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legitimately chosen by the people, is
the voice of the people and is therefore

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obligatory. The Italian researcher Giovanni Sartori
has already asked similar questions and has developed

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the topic of the important question,
Who are we or are the people.

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For these arthor has six possible interpretations. The first is the people as literally

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everyone. The second is an approximate
plurality, i e a majority. The

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third is that of the people as
a populace, that is, the lower

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classes or the proletariat. The fourth
is an organic and indivisible whole, the

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fifth is the people as an absolute
majority and the sixth is as a moderate

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majority. The question depends on who
is asked, especially when it comes to

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politicians, as I said before,
since many countries live in democracy and it

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is the people who choose their rulers. Many leaders and choose to believe that

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then the people are the people who
elected them their voters, who make up

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that people have changed, because those
who voted before were men over twenty-

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one years old with properties and married
and the group opened up to enslaved people,

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illiterate and scarce resources, like women, until today, when except non

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- nationalized foreigners, minors, internees
or military, all can vote. This

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group of people is what economist Joseph
Chupiter considered the people, those who have

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the right to vote and who de
facto rule. However, you like me

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will have asked the same question.
Do people who cannot vote as minors,

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the security forces or those held in
prisons do not belong to the people?

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Well, in this case there is
another principle, nationality. So the people

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are the same as a nation and
its boundaries and borders are the same.

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The people share the same national identity
and, in this case, of all

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Colombians born nationalized, we are part
of that famous people. So far it

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seems that there is a clear and
concrete answer to the question and then the

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rest of this chapter can be replaced
with musical programming. The people are all

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Colombians or the inhabitants of each nation. But I wish everything was so simple

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in politics, even in democracies,
the people change according to the interests of

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whoever has the power, and I
can think of several examples of this.

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We go to the year two thousand
sixteen. Donald Trump, in a campaign

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speech for his re- election,
told Urocomillas the only important thing is the

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unification of the people, because the
others mean nothing. I close quotes to

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who was referring to Trump with those
extras, the answer is simple. Those

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who did not vote for him,
undocumented immigrants and African- Americans. Then,

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as opposed to the people, to
the demos, a new side is

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created, a shadow within the same
nation, we, the people, against

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you. And that' s not
something new at all. Creating another is

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also part of creating an identity one
of us. Ah and his rival in

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the campaign didn' t fall behind. Democrat candidate Girary Clinton made some rather

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subligate statements about Trump' s followers
saying they could get half of them into

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a pitiful basket. Sping Grouse Lee
Jean robertsteck I was heff of Trumps of

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forters Cent wharrack of basketf the Parable. This is best explained by the Spanish

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writer and essayist Jesús Ferrero, in
his text, when he says that people

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tend to exclude and are part of
his subject. The peoples imaginaryally create different

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degrees of humanity and history is full
of cases that reaffirm what Ferrero says.

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Just look at the horror of the
Nazi holocaust or the South African paradise.

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But I am referring to these two
particular cases, because we are talking about

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Germans against Germans and South Africans against
South Africans, that is, citizens of

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the same country against themselves. In
other words, the people against the people.

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Usually, these others are the opposite
of the people, to the real

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people and here we begin to talk
about a well- known word popurism.

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The German polytoelo Jean Werner Müller explains
this in an article to Urocomillas. What

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really distinguishes the populist is an affirmation
that he and he alone represent the real

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people. As Trump explained, as
the executive now controls, the people control

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the government by implication all illegitimate oppositions
and if you oppose Trump, you oppose

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the people. I' m closing
Comillas. Something similar happened several years ago,

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in a thousand nine hundred and ninety- eight, when the then presidential

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candidate of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez,
began his campaign with the proposal of a

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constituent national assembly, with the slogan
with Chávez commands the people chabes I am

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no longer a chaver is a people
tucked in with the tunic of popular support

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is dangerous. We have already seen
it in all political trends. In fact,

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the slogan of the last presidential campaign
of the far- right Jair Bolsonaro

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was Captain Dupovo, who translates captain
of the village. The music of his

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campaign seems to be that of one
of the North Korean leaders, songs in

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which, among other things, they
say that he is of God and that

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there was never anyone like him.
On this there is a rather interesting academic

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work, entitled we the people who
analyze who the people are. According to

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the Twitter account of the former Brazilian
president. One of the authors' analyses

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is that the people appear as an
idealized, pure category vilified by the aristocracy

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in its most basic rights. It
is the populist' s duty to restore

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those rights to the people. But
its power can only be conceived in democratic

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regimes, in principle by the will
of that very people. And so it

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is considered that there are three main
elements at the heart of populism, the

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people, the elite or elites and
the popular will. And, therefore,

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populism requires that the people it claims
to represent be recognized in it and place

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their trust and vows in it.
And that conviction implies, through communication,

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that this movement is established with what
identifies as the true people or the common

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people, that is, the citizenry
composed of the excluded, the oppressed and

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the forgotten. However, the tendency
to own the total representation of the people

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ends up generating more division than unity
over these or ns. A recent column

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by writer Juan Esteban Constantin, in
which he wonders who is the dream of

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that popular force, who defines it
and answers it himself. What is difficult

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to say to Brocomillas, because fascism
also consists in that, in that a

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movement is attributed to the brave the
power to point out from its ideas and

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prejudices, what are the scope of
the concept of the people and who are

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excluded from it, which is a
political and moral contradiction, because the essence

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of the people, its premise is
that we are all there. Cierro Comillas

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I moved to journalist Mara Forgets Samper
the question how the concept of people has

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served populisms. This told me the
term village is an ambiguous, complex,

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equivocal and multivo term, with at
the same time and also, controversial term

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to land here in the region.
I believe that the concept of people is

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key to populism, especially for the
left populism that conceives it, not as

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our Constitution does in its third article, which includes us all, but as

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the whole of the excluded, of
the marginalized, of those who suffer the

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abuse of corrupt elites. It should
now be said that populist discourse is in

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some way rooted in the limitations or
shortcomings of democracy and thus makes the people

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a strategic, political and social actor, a homogeneous identity. Even if it

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isn' t. I believe that
in that sense, the people is a

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functional construction to that binary discourse that
divides society into two, into oppressed people

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and into the oppressive or slave ligarchy
to say it in the terms of President

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Gustavo pt The people then are not
a homogeneous unity with shared identity, they

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are heterogeneous and changing and so I
believe that no one can appropriate their representation,

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which is what the populist leader does
that right there, ignores institutional restrictions,

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which is the gateway to authoritarianism and
many times to dictation. The people

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serve the populist leader to manipulate and
instrumentalize, but also to exclude and ignore

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institutions and evade mechanisms of reblessing accounts. So the term people is functional to

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many ideologies and to many leaders,
either from left to right, but especially

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to those on the left, as
we have seen in Latin America. And

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for more examples, because there is
Correa, there is Chávez, there is

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Maduro, Calula, it is evo. Morales. In short, examples about

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the beginning of the program mentioned the
famous vox saying Populi vox Day, which

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translates the voice of the people is
the voice of God in many ways that

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the people, at least understanding it
as the winning majority, are absolutely right.

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It' s not that simple or
that good. The first example is

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that the Ochile son says it shows
that, according to respondents, the rights

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of the vast majority of the population
should be prioritized over the rights of criminals.

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Twenty- seven percent of respondents believe
that in order to stop a necessary

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criminal from going over some of his
human rights, and forty percent think that

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the government should worry more about the
human rights of Chileans than about immigrants.

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The same measurement showed that, although
it is clear that the majority of Chileans

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are committed to democracy in certain crises, sixty percent of respondents mention that authoritarianism

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is justified in one of the following
circumstances, human rights violations, increased corruption

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in compliance with laws or uncontrolled crime, and the data continue. According to

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the World Barometer of Open Society Foundations, forty- two percent of the under

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- sixs worldwide believe that the best
political regime is a military dictatorship and thirty

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- five percent would prefer to live
in a pro- authoritarian civilian regime,

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without division of powers or an effective
parliamentary system. In Colombia, thirty-

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nine percent of those interviewed said they
prefer to be governed by a leader who

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dispenses with parliamentary elections. According to
the Latin study Barómetro two thousand twenty-

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three, thirty- three percent of
Mexicans think that an authoritarian government can be

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preferable to a democratic one. And
in local terms, the issue is serious.

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In Colombia, eighty percent of the
population is dissatisfied with the democracy that

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is being managed and support for this
type of government is only forty- eight

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percent and many leaders seem to be
aware of those wishes. A few months

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00:18:33.640 --> 00:18:37.359
ago, Juanita Gebertus, director for
America at Human Ride Watch, in an

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interview with the German media Doichevelle said
that there is a loss of confidence in

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democracy, of a crowding of many
leaders who are willing to transgress the separation

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of powers and continue to erode the
rule of law. There are some cases

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in which the most authoritarian governments enjoy
great popular support, as is the case

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with the Salvador and the prisoner'
s government in Ti Bukelli, which has

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solved the one that was a serious
security problem, that the detriment of the

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human and civil rights of many citizens
of that country. Like the arbitrary detention

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of thousands of people. According to
a May report last year by the NGO

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Cristo Sal Since the beginning of the
state of emergency, at least one hundred

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and sixty pesos have died bau state
custody. But these allegations and many more

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human rights organizations do not affect Buckeli' s popularity. According to the study

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by Latino Barómetro already cited, the
Salvadoran President is the Latin American president with

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the highest approval. I am not
going to refer to other cases of authoritarian

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governments today, such as those of
Ortega in Nicaragua or Maduro in Venezuela,

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because they, contrary to bukele,
enjoy little popularity. In the case of

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Nicaragua, according to a Galoub poll
last year, seventy percent of citizens believe

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that the country is heading the wrong
way and in Venezuela, according to a

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poll by Delphi and the Center for
Political Studies and Go Government of the Catholic

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University Andrés Bello, eighty- five
percent of the country wants a change.

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The world is full of terrible governments
for many reasons, with very low popularity

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and vice versa, of good governments
that fail to seduce the people. For

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some that democracy is always right is
like saying that the client is always right.

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For example, for Aristotle, the
fatal problem of democracy is that it

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divides society by confronting the majority,
even if it is not far superior to

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the minority. Seven years ago,
Julián Bagini' s Ph D wrote about

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this in an article in t de
guardan a urocomillas. Western democracy is built

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around tripartite trust, trust in the
people to hold the Government accountable and set

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the overall direction of politics, but
also trust in politicians to make specific decisions

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than institutions, to provide safeguards for
hasty or tyrannical contractions. What we are

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seeing throughout the Western world is that
the last two pillars are being torn down,

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leaving all confidence, resting on the
people I close quotes. According to

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Bagini, democracy has been useful to
us, because it is not democracy as

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it conceived the ancient Greeks. For
him, what we call democracy is actually

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a representative system of government that leaves
most important decisions to elected leaders. At

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this point he cannot stop thinking if
again in the referendum for peace canuel.

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However, in my view, it
was not the right decision, even though

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the majority wanted it to be.
Finally, that is what democracy is all

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about, to believe, to respect
the voice of the people. At this

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point I wonder then the people are
always right. I conveyed the concern to

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the director of the democracy study group
at the University of Rosario, Professor Jan

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Bassette. Well, democracy is a
regime based on the primacy of pop sovereignty,

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which does not exactly mean that the
people are always right. In fact,

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it does not make much sense to
put it this way, but it

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does mean that all government actions in
a democracy must be justified according to the

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will of the people, their interests, their needs. What happens is that

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we do not have an absolutely accurate
method of determining once and for all what

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this will of the people is and, in fact, we have a debate

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of never, never end up in
a democracy about really what the will of

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the people is, what their needs
are, and even a debate about what

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exactly the people are, if it
is the whole world, if it is

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the majority, if it is the
popular sectors for that people, if it

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is the national ones, unlike the
foreign ones, etcetera, etcetera. So,

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this truly indefinable character of the people
makes democracy pluralist and, in reality,

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a sort of competing Henry various ideas
about what the people want and what

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the people need. The President Petru
on many occasions has not resisted the caudilloist

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temptation to feel the anointed of the
people. He has repeatedly called on the

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grassroots, his voters to demonstrate to
support the reforms he promised and which,

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as he says, are the mandate
given to him by the people to govern.

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He has repeated several times that the
approximately eleven million people who voted for

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him in the second round are the
people and those who do not support him

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are the oligarchy or simply the right. Adrián Restrepo is a PhD in social

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sciences and a professor at the Institute
of Political Studies of the University of Antioquia

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and writes a text that asks which
people the President refers to and, among

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other things, tells Burou Comillas the
leader, the President, has to define

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the adversary or even the enemy of
the people, the angpueblo. For this

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he uses broad denominations such as the
orinarchy, the dominant groups, the establishment

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00:24:06.599 --> 00:24:10.599
and others that allow the leader to
shelter with them those whom he considers to

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be opponents. Likewise, the leader, the President, must define the adversary

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or even the enemy of the people. Cierro Comillas, the people that the

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00:24:18.559 --> 00:24:22.039
President constantly invokes are the poor and
the excluded from the country. However,

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to believe that all poor studies in
the country support it is as much reductionist

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as to think that all people with
money or more affluent classes. They'

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re conservative right- wingers. Let' s nail that town of yours that

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he claims to represent. President Petro
referred to a few weeks ago when he

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launched a balloon on a possible constituent
Colombia. You don' t have to

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kneel. The popular triumph of two
thousand two is respected and the constituent National

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Assembly must transform the institutions. The
popular vote that President Petro is constantly talking

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00:25:00.559 --> 00:25:04.720
about and with which he always counts
are those more than eleven million that we

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have mentioned on other occasions. He
has argued, for example, what aurocomillas.

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That is why the Constitution of the
ninety- one, made by a

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constituent in its first article, says
that the source of Sovereignty is the people

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and that is why the stanza of
the national anthem we sing every day.

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He says that it is the people
of the sovereign Cerro Comillas and also recently

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the OAS published a statement requesting respect
for the President' s mandate and said

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in its account of x auro Comillas
what sectors outside the Supreme Court of Justice

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00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:41.319
and linked to drug trafficking and corruption
have explicitly attempted is not to allow the

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mandate that the people granted by popular
vote. So citizenship has every right to

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organize itself democratically and peacefully. I
close Comillas and, of course, in

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this case, the President is absolutely
right. However, it does not cease

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to cause my concern who is the
people referred to by President Petrú after the

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question to the House Representative, David
Rasero, and this told me the people

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category has three fundamental elements. The
first most important has to do with the

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self- awareness of those who differ
politically from the small group that has held

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political and economic power. What Gaitan
in the past spoke of liberal and conservative

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00:26:26.559 --> 00:26:32.480
oligarchy, but Ligarchy and the people
were built with the notion of being the

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00:26:32.599 --> 00:26:37.279
opposites of that ligarchy. Today that
idea is taken up again people are those

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who are different from those who have
always kidnapped the State. The second vision

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has to do with oneness from the
plural. It is a singular plural is

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the unified mass from diversity peoples.
They are the great majorities that unite from

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their differences in function of a cause, in function precisely against getting into the

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league. It' s a crowd. And third, it has to do

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with capacity and agency. The people
are only people while they are able to

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move, to mobilize, to act. If it is a people that does

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not move, that does not act, it is completely meaningless. I'

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ll conclude with an obviousness. There
is no consensus on who or who the

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people are. The answer will change
depending on who you ask. The people

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are all Colombians, the people are
those who support the government in turn,

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00:27:33.480 --> 00:27:37.119
the people are those who have rights, or the people are certain classes,

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the proletariat or the most enlightened.
But there is one conclusion that we can

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come to, and that is that, like the word of God, the

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00:27:45.359 --> 00:27:49.240
people' s concert has been handled
by all for their convenience. I'

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00:27:49.319 --> 00:27:53.680
ll take that town. We are
totus, the Colombians and the politicians who

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represent us have the task of working
for all, without distinction from political parties

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00:27:59.720 --> 00:28:03.680
or thought. I am Roberto Pombo
and this was chapter eighty- three of

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00:28:03.759 --> 00:28:10.160
my questions. See you in the
next chapter from now on. This chapter

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00:28:10.240 --> 00:28:17.000
of my questions is available on all
podcast platforms. This episode was made possible

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00:28:17.079 --> 00:28:22.240
by Kafan. Family compensation box.
Dirección Roberto Pombo, Producción General Juan Abel

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00:28:22.319 --> 00:28:27.519
Gutiérrez, editorial advisor, Daniel San
Pedro Espina, scripts juan Abel Gutiérrez and

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00:28:27.599 --> 00:28:34.519
Johnny Rodríguez. Field production Marcela Salazar
and Lucía Beltrán audio postproduction Carlos Bernar