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Third lap the podcast with Alejandro Gaviría
and Ricardo Silva Romero, a podcast of

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the locutorio arroba el locutorio. I
want to call myself this new phenomenon,

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the phenomenon rene Guita I already know
where the thing is going. Yes,

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because there he was invited to be
part of the institution and he said no

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next time, next time. And
now we' re already thinking about the

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next one we won' t have
retired. Yeah, yeah, but we

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' re gonna have to recruit Gita, because he' s the next Petro

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wants to make a next one.
I was on the bench thirty- three

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years the wire this to get in
what you think. It is a new

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attempt by an Assembly, because I
was just thinking that only a new constituent

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can want someone who does not believe
that the State was able to reform itself?

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And someone who doesn' t think
the state was able to reform is

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that it hasn' t followed the
news. Hi, Ricardo Hi, Alejandro.

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We meet again, in person,
and I would like us to talk

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a little first, like the Constitution
of the year in nine hundred and ninety

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- one, about our ideas and
after their reforms to land on the constituent.

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Yeah, that' s great.
But I' d like to start

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with the anecdotary. Where were you
in two years of ninety- one,

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now that thirty- three years were
fulfilled? In this month of July,

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I was leaving school, going out
to school and had some information in favor,

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because my mom has always had a
partner who is like her sister,

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who is Maria Teresa Garcés have always
had her office together and the whole thing,

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and Maria Teresa was the era and
my mom helped her in the office

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of her office. Then we followed
day to day. What was happening was

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really fascinating and exciting and as a
mover, there are press releases on the

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day the Constitution was proclaimed and the
Constitution of nine hundred and eighty- eight

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hundred and eighty- six was declared
dead. There are anecdotes of Mary Theresa

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correcting the last commas and points in
time. There are the chronicles of it,

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therefore, resolving the last doubts of
the almost editorial language. I think

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I remember very well reading that Gabriel
García Márquez had something to do with the

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final edition. I also think he
got her to read. He was able

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to read and also put some comas
and perhaps through María Mercedes Carranza, who

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was one of the four women.
There were only four of them. There

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' s Bella and I forget the
fourth one, Maria Teresa Garcés. The

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idea Bella, María Mercedes Carranza and
Errán has been changing and I have not

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evaluated it exhaustively or in detail,
but I think it is well drafted.

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Me. Yeah. I think,
yes, I think it' s a

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rich thing that' s always come
to my attention when I was an official,

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especially about the poor drafting of the
rules and laws in Colombia. Yeah,

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and I think it' s been
deteriorating. Yes, of course one

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could compare some of the new articles
of the Constitution with the original ones and

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we will probably find a worse wording. It' s a phenomenon of these

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times. Blindness to bad writing,
people easily send out pointless emails, without

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things. I don' t know
why, because they' ve been allowing

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that, that, that license.
I was just teased from Bogotá, had

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finished my civil engineering career and was
studying economics at the University of the Andes

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and from there as a student with
curiosity. I remember well that day,

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the fourth of July of a thousand
nine hundred and ninety- one, the

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day of proclamation. I do not
know how to call it, Yes,

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a programming began and I remember a
phrase in that context, spoken by a

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teacher or by someone who seemed very
beautiful to me and I have repeated since

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then that that Constitution was a democratic
response to a challenge of democracy, as

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if Colombia, our country, had
responded with more democracy. Yes, the

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challenges to democracy. I remember my
mom Maria Theresa good. The people of

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that generation were young and the feeling
that it was a gesture of young people

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and there were good people in that
constituent, there were people who represented the

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past, no doubt, but I
find it interesting. The young people were

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there, they were totally there,
they were born of an exact youth initiative.

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There was even some discomfort among the
great jurists who said no how they

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will touch the Constitution of one thousand
eight hundred and eighty- six. This

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is a Constitution of one thousand eight
hundred eighty- six was about one hundred

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pages, this was about three hundred
said. This is a tedious thing.

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Those things as well as to contemplate
every right in a constitution. It was

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like a conservative vocation to have a
small constitution that would say generalities and from

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there, legislate. But this was
quite the opposite. It was kind of

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a novel in the sense that worked
more for inclusion than anything else. It

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is missing to put this in,
that vocation to put things in and into

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that Constitution. I was also witnesses
as an economist of another conservative bit that

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came today the former Colombian jurists,
not economists, and I remember reading an

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article by some of these economists,
because they were my professors at that time

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that showed how the number of articles
of constitutions in the countries was associated with

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less growth, that is, the
more articles had a Constitution, an absurd

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thing, a little bit, and
a correlation of the so many that can

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be made clear later, Ricardo,
time passes, the years do not come.

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Now we were talking about maybe we' d want to write some kind

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of books about a life, not
about one of the thousand we could have

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had. We' ve had one
and that one I' ve had led

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me to relate to the Constitution in
various ways. A very intense one was

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with a development of the Constitution,
already of the Constitutional Court of Carlos Gaviri,

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in the year nineteen hundred and ninety- seven, on the right to

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die in dignity. Yeah, I
mentioned all this because I had a conversation

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last week with a New Ortimes reporter
who asked me a tough question. It

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made me wonder why Colombia, in
the developing world, has been the country

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that made the most rapid progress on
this complex issue of the right to dignified

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death, Utanasia. That' s
a very good question. There was Belgium,

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there was Holland and there was Colombia. She came to say why in

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Colombia, Holland, which, as
we said, is a good pioneer,

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pioneer of many issues of dying with
dignity. And the only answer that I

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could give without having analyzed this issue
exhaustively was the Constitution, the Constitutional Court,

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that first Constitutional Court that marked a
course Carlos Gabría, liberal and progressive,

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and that liberalism that was born there, that was in turn a trigger,

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a cultural change, that transformed our
country into a single one. Today,

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reviewing the time of July 4,
time the edition of the time of

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that July 4, nine hundred and
ninety- one. It is impressive that

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one does feel that a country is
starting and if a purely liberal transformation has

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been achieved and it is even shocking
to read it is very strong with what

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was coming and the images that are
in that edition. It' sÁlvaro

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Gómez and Navarro and Serpa and Humberto
de la Calle, all these people,

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you realize. I think you realize
at the time that it was extraordinary what

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was going on. But seeing that
newspaper, thirty- three years later,

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one says this is perhaps the most
important thing that has happened in our recent

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history, that capacity to transform itself
from the state itself, which is sometimes

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not noticed. The State itself was
able to remove itself and that and to

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leave the space to such a liberal
Constitutional Court in a country that, like

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the Constitution of eighty- six,
was very tied, not only to Catholicism,

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perhaps but rather to Catholic fanaticism.
He was more fanatical than clerical Catholics.

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Speaking of the liberal issue, I
also found myself in life even if

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a study with the judgement of ninety- four, also of Carlos Gabría,

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on the minimum dose, which was
a first sample of that liberal Colombia that

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had been born with the Constitution,
was criticized at the time by President Gabría

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himself, who would later be a
great advocate of a different anti- drug

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policy part of the Global Commission on
these issues and that opened a way in

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Latin America and that still generates very
large tensions and polemics in our country.

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We could say that it has not
been fully implemented, that there is still

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a harassment of a young man who
is out there with a world of marijuana

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and ristras. But it was also
the birth of that liberal idea. I

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Ricardo, it is difficult to take
stock of why, beyond the institutional issue,

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well that happened to the country,
I believe that the homicide rate decreased

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substantially for many reasons, not just
the Constitution. If you look at this

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20th century, the first todecas,
the Colombian economy has grown faster than any

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other Latin American economy. Poverty fell
from fifty percent to less than a third

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of inflation became systematically one- digit. There are unfulfilled promises. One of

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them is decentralization. Right, politics
may have changed me a lot. I

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think one could make a more or
less reasonable case of saying that in Colombia

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and more corruption today because there is
also more state. Yes, right,

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the Constitution is accused of being neoliberal, but that is a contradictory means,

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because the size of the State increased. Yes, there is some sort of

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idea in the Constitution that the private
sector can participate in the provision of public

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service its social services. He feels
one more and more difficult to say that

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that is either neoliberal. Thirty years
after the state' s regulation of private

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participation sounds neo- liberal, the
state does not cease to participate in everything

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and, moreover, it was growing. Health coverage rose from 30 percent to

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100 percent. Public spending on education
has grown substantially. The coverage of public

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higher education more than doubled. Then
I do not know and have a vocation,

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the Constitution and that constituent Assembly of
the ninety- one that one can

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verify in the composition of the Group
in the Assembly, of the composition of

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the Assembly, which is that the
whole world was really there, that is,

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there was the Liberal Party and there
was the National Salvation Movement ofÁlvaro

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Gómez, that is, the Preserved
Urism ofÁlvaro Gómez. There was the

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19th month Democratic Alliance, which began
with that name Democratic Alliance. Then followed

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the Conservative Social Party, which was
perhaps the most reluctant side to change the

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Constitution of eighty- six, but
then there was also the UP was alive

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to Bella, was in the Christian
Union, was the Indigenous Association. In

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short, yes, there was a
clear political university and it is noted in

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that constituent, that is, in
that Constitution that they also put us all

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to learn at the end of the
College, as we were already, in

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the end they put us to read
it in a whole year, in a

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class and one did realize that they
had not destroyed anything, that is,

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they had respected the branches of power, the balance, because republican, and

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at the same time, what they
had included the populations, the different Colombians,

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to the rights all this way of
the Constitutional Court and the defense of

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rights and guardianship the bunk as it
materializes their rights and returns it to truth.

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Yeah, well, it' s
a very purpose. I don'

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t know if the 21st century can
be said to be freeing the bodies of

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the State, that is, that
every body has rights, and that'

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s an advanced one. That is
why, of course, the question about

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Belgium, Holland and Colombia makes a
lot of sense and then came the ruling

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that emerges from there, this new
liberal Colombia, about voluntary termination of pregnancy

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and what has happened as Colombia from
there, since the Constitution, with the

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Constitutional Court, being the protagonist of
cultural change, playing a very important role.

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Now, Ricardo, many of these
things paradoxically have been called into question

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and that role that we are highlighting
from the Constitution. Now that you'

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re talking, I want to call
this new phenomenon, the Renéiguito phenomenon,

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I know where the thing is going. Yes, because there you were invited

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to become part of the Constitution and
he said no next time, next time

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and now we' re already thinking
about the next time. Nochina was able

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to stay, as she retired.
Yeah, yeah, but we' re

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gonna have to recruit Gita, because
he' s President Petro wants to make

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an next one. He was on
the bench thirty- three years. It

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is ready such a calm to enter
what you think of this new attempt of

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an assembly because I was just thinking
that it can only want a new constituent.

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Anyone who doesn' t think the
state was able to reform itself?

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And one who does not believe that
the State was able to reform itself is

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that it has not followed the news
and it is particularly admirable that the State

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has been able to come out of
the Constitution of 1 880 eighty- six

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to that of 1 9, one, which is a very fundamental reform,

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after it has been able to incorporate
into it the Peace Agreement of 2 1

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16, which is indeed the State
reviewing itself. It just gives us a

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truth commission that did a great job. It seems to me that what the

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Truth Commission compiled is extraordinary what they
did. If you read those reports,

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you can' t believe it,
fact that' s given us the gep

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that you haven' t done,
but reveal everything that happened on the part

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of the state, everything you achieved, violence, justice, yes, transitional

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justice, gave it to us,
gave us the missing search unit. If

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that' s the state revealing what
it did to us. And that is

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of value, of an importance that
should be recognized, as when President Petro

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mentions the seven points. It mentions, for example, the guarantee of rights,

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which has not been fully given.
One understands how a reform of the

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Constitution, where these rights exist,
where there are already other laws, for

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example, health, is going to
be implemented, because in order to be

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fulfilled it is a process of construction, of the capacity of the State,

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of fiscal strengthening, of the same
State that does not simply go through a

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constitutional reform, that is to say
already constitutionally. We have this issue resolved.

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Now come the different challenges. If
he doesn' t come, it

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' s not the case. There
are two recard issues where someone could raise

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their hand, for example Juan Fernando
Cristo, and say, there are two

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issues where the Colombian Node State has
not been able to reform itself, which

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are justice and politics. What do
you think of that? I think it

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is. I think it' s
true, but it' s hard for

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me to think that the road is
a constituent. It seems to me that

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there have been many attempts at reform
of justice and political reform, always failed

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and sabotaged, full of micos that
at the last minute make back the things

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that, in fact, was the
origin of the Constitution, of the ninety

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- one, a profound attempt at
constitutional reform that failed in Congress and that

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prompted the student movement that ended in
the Assembly of nine hundred and ninety-

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one. But, at the same
time, it seems to me that there

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is no sense in calling for a
constituent from power, from the Presidency of

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the Republic. It seems to me
that if society is not asking for it

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or demanding it for that it is
mediating it. I think they talk.

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She' s disconnected from that subject. It is disconnected from that issue and

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is clear what it wants, which
are very punctual things. Basically, let

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the politicians leave them alone in the
first place and let the Government, that

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the Government, that which is accurate, that allows them to live in dignity,

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that opens up the possibilities for dignified
lives, then it seems to me

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that this is not the case,
does not have the context that is needed

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for this. This is why people
are having this suspicion that the constituent seems

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more like a political strategy, a
reform aimed at guaranteeing greater dignity and better

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living conditions and better well- being
for the general population. If the proposal

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does not come from the political circumstances, but from the circumstances of the President,

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what the new Minister of the Interior
is saying now is that the constituent

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is only an instrument, that what
is the national concern and that if it

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emerges from the national agreement that it
needs a constituent, then that is the

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way. Or that there may be
constitutional reforms, assembly twigs, prostituters or

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legal ones. I don' t
know what you were doing. It must

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be acknowledged to the Minister Christ that
he has been speaking of federalism. Long

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time ago, that' s something
you said. The Constitution of the 1990s,

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not the provision complied with, did
not achieve centralization crime. Centralization has

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been worse and worse. But Ricardo, I have to say it myself and

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I don' t want to become
an obsessive critic. We have had a

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total recentralization and the decentralization I would
say as an economist is that discretionary spending,

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not all spending, because some that
is not discretionary, that will simply

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pay the payroll, has been accumulating
in the national government. Yeah, that

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' s right. And that accumulation, that recentralization, has been greater in

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the Petro Government than in another Government. There is no doubt that a Constitution

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is being proposed to advance centralization,
when the Government is recentralizing in its actions.

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Those are the contradictions that seem to
me to be very problematic. That

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' s why it doesn' t
make sense, and that' s why

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you' re talking gibberish. Christ, for he comes with that idea from

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before being in the Ministry. So
your central theme has been that federalization or

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that federalism, then. But of
course it comes here to try to do

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politics in the best sense of expression, which is to join wills, convince

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and make agreements. As long as
it seems that the government does not want

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to do that, then it is
as always that some liberal enters the government

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seems to be working. On the
other hand, we were now talking about

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how one can, does not have
a life and can have many. That

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' s what Gustavo Petro' s
book called A Life Many Lives. Yes,

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yes, in that book he describes
himself as author of the Constitution of

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nine hundred and ninety- one.
It' s amazing in his biography.

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No, I don' t think
I' ve stepped on him since we

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say what that aspiration has. It
is what seems a little contradictory and because

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it has now been very hard in
its trials and I think wrong about the

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achievements of the Constitution, which for
me are very big, are enormous.

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That is now that we are constantly
talking about uniting Colombia in relation to the

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America Cup and with the slogans that
they release on Twitter, that what is

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the motto of the country, that
the country is not a United States and

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the country the country unites us the
country I do not know, I thought

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again a prayer that the country unites
us. Now that you see that reviewing

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the Assembly of nine hundred and ninety- one. It was a country,

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then, capable of a country of
irreconcilable, capable of writing a single constitution.

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It' s a miracle and it' s the news of these last

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fifty years. I believe the world
is more complex and more polarized. Perhaps

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social media has changed politics a lot. There is one example that I find

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interesting Ricardo, which is that of
Chile. Yeah, yeah, he had

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a total constitution. In the other
type, for example, of dictatorship,

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he wanted to change, he wanted
to get into a first process. He

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failed one more second from the other
side and failed. And that process did

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not end up uniting the country,
but dividing it further. And I believe

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that reformist opportunities were lost in Chile, our country will continue with the current

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Constitution, because after two constitutional proposals
ple visited, none managed to represent and

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unite Chile in its beautiful diversity.
The country was polarized, divided and,

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apart from this strong outcome, the
constitutional process failed to channel hopes for a

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new Constitution drafted for all. Totally. I think that should be studied very

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carefully. It is an example of
these times, because it is the constitutional

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reform in time of the Twitter wineries
and it did not go well. No,

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because there' s always one group
trying to prevail over the other and

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we don' t have much are
targets to think that in Colombia it'

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s going to work. There wouldn' t be a way to get started.

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I don' t think he'
s gonna give up on what we

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were saying. It' s not
the historical context, it' s not

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the political circumstances. The people aren' t asking. The people are asking

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for it was a dignified life.
That can be done from a government.

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To dignify lives can be done.
And nobody' s thinking in terms of

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writing, of laws, that'
s not what' s coming first,

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it' s coming from above.
And when it comes from above, because

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it' s to start violent and
then it' s very likely that Chile

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will happen, which is the attempt
of a group of people to prevail over

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the others that never is ever achieved, it' s never entirely achieved in

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a society, because it' s
moderately democratic. It will be Richard that

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a young man who is fleeing our
podcast in the tro millennium sees that we

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are nostalgic of the ninety- one. Yes, for it is thirty-

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three years, for two old men
clinging to their past and their history and

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their life. Maybe so, maybe
so. There' s something with little

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capillary matter, no desire. You
have to say things the way bald one

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of us is. We' re
not going to say which implants are in

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your video plans. In my future
there is no plan, but you can

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think there is. It' s
a nostalgia, but it' s the

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nostalgia of history. I mean,
I think that reviving the present knowing what

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happened in the' 90s, which
is what is an example for what we

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want to do now. The constitutions, in my opinion, have that double

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condition. I believe that they are
also important because of tradition, so it

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is accumulating and the stories that go
there contain the same constitutional changes of debate,

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of the jurisprudence of the Court.
I think that must be fully respected.

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There' s something you said before
you started about the political parties,

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then after the Constitution of' 90s. It has to do with that,

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with the inability to maintain a certain
tradition of those parties. His idea would

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be his tradition, his history.
They were not faithful even their own achievements

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every time there was a political scandal
in these thirty- three years, from

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the process eight thousand to the political
GS, the traditional parties broke apart,

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in such a way that we well
overcome the bipartisanism that was so violent at

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some point in the 20th century inclusive
as well and exclusive, but we did

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not make it something better. Those
parties did not reform themselves, nor were

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they even proud of their legacy.
These parties had achieved important things for Colombia

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and were embarrassed and preferred to become
radical change and U party and a thousand

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more things that are no longer expensive
and sometimes seem like BE football teams that

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are trading with new politicians as good
Come. Sometimes this season he' s

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going to buy roy barriers to get
in here and here we' re going

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to pass Christ. That' s
where he turned yes. There is no

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structure and tradition there that is fulfilled
Ricardo. I believe that thirty- three

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years later we can say that we
are proud children of that idea of the

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Constitution. We have grown in our
contact with politics, with political debates,

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because we have both been involved in
one way or another as a political tract.

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They are there and it seems to
us that this institutional history is rescueable

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and must be respected in some way. I believe that I interpret this conversation

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as a defense of that tradition and
those achievements and its recent history of our

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country fully in agreement. We'
re still in the fight. Yes,

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thank you. It' s clear
we can all write. It is clear

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that everyone, with luck and vocation, can devote himself to the craft of

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00:27:00.640 --> 00:27:07.680
writing. But lately I think we
can' t just write, we should

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00:27:07.680 --> 00:27:11.839
write. Writing is the best therapy
we have at hand welcome to fictionary an

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00:27:12.200 --> 00:27:21.519
audio course on how and why I
wrote Take the audiocourse of fictional writing in

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00:27:21.680 --> 00:27:30.799
the locutorio com slash fictionario with Ricardo
Silva Romero. Always pick a good time.

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00:27:30.160 --> 00:27:37.720
Always choose a good conversation. Third
lap podcast. Subscribe now and listen

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00:27:37.759 --> 00:27:41.519
to it every week on your favorite
platform a podcast produced by the speaker.

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00:27:41.839 --> 00:27:47.519
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