Senator slaps reality and government in Colombia

In the midst of the convulsed Congress of the Republic in Colombia, where one another is branded as guerrillas, hitmen, paramilitaries and any other kind of expletives, one stands out with leisurely walking, taciturn gaze and gentle treatment, one of the senators more serene and eloquent of Colombia is the economist born in Pereira, Risaralda, Iván Marulanda Gómez, who gave a real slap to reality to the government that Iván Duque presides over and in passing his fellow congressmen of the upper and lower chambers on the night of last Tuesday December 3.

Who was a constituent in 1991, mayor of his native Pereira, councilman of Medellin and founder of the political party Nuevo Liberalismo, proclaimed his words before the plenary of Congress pleading with his colleagues to deny the tax reform presented by the national government under euphemisms as' law of financing' and now 'Economic Growth Law'.

In what has been considered the best speech of the year by different analysts and by the 'almighty' social networks, Marulanda made an x-ray of the country in a few minutes, but with such vehemence that a large part of the citizenry identified with his words that by At times they were scolding and at other times they seemed to beg their fellow legislators to hear the citizen shout of the protest in the streets.

“This state was very small for the country because it has been in the hands and is in the hands of some people, of intelligences that think that the state has to be small, that it is a hindrance, that it is not a development agent and that the agents of development are in the private sector and what they have done during all these years is to disarm the civilian population of their tools of progress and to deliver the benefits of this nation to a very small handful of privileged people who have enriched themselves under the protection of policies that are dictated here in this congress”, said at the beginning of his speech who was years ago partner of the murdered Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento.

The formula raised by the senator is very simple. Those who are nourished by a precarious state are those who finance the campaigns of the great majority of congressmen who require significant sums of money to access those positions, as well as those who intend to reach the presidency of the Republic. So those elected prefer to design policies that maintain the privileges of those very few funders rather than govern and legislate for the Colombian people.

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He pointed out figures from the nation's budget that would make any well-intentioned international analyst or observer blush: “That Colombian state can allocate 0.71% of its general budget for agriculture and social development, is 0.71% for 99 % of the national territory”. But he did not stop there with the figures for the general budget of the nation. He also referred to the environment of the country with the greatest biological diversity and natural resources of the planet, and the senator added that “for the environment and sustainable development 0.26% of the general budget of the nation, this is a joke!".

And he continued alleging another of the sectors that were most disadvantaged by tax policy and resource sharing. “On science, technology, and innovation; how can a country doesn't investigate, doesn't renew its productive procedures and doesn't get in tune with the technological advances of the world progress?” Marulanda Gómez asked a silent congress while looking dumbfounded when hitting the lectern with his papers full of notes and shouted, "because in science and technology we invest 0.14% of the national budget."

Referring promptly to the tax reform presented by the Duke government, the Risaraldense stressed, “This is a mockery of the nation. And they come to tell us here, that with this tax reform, which is giving away more money from the state than it is raising, we are going to rescue this country and we are going to make it progress, that is a joke, a bad joke !, for a country anguished, for a desperate country where young people are marching (in the streets), for the first time, next to their parents ” .

He added, “in culture 0.15, in sport 0.25, yes, in defense and police 13% and in the service of debt 20%, this is the highest item in the budget, a country that lives on duty. "

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"Let us take advantage of all this popular support to sink this tax reform," the senator of the party Alianza Verde invited his teammates.

“It's that in this country you don't want to touch the big capitals, which are the ones that have to pay the cost of the development of this nation, they are getting rich because this nation exists, because these institutions exist, because this market exists, because there are the human resources of Colombians, they have been able to make their fortunes because there is Colombia, so they pay! Because they want to belong to a club that does not pay maintenance fee and that is a vulgarity that has been made possible here by the tolerance of this Congress,” he said with an emphatic tone amid the excited shouts of the speaker and mute silence of his audience.

He was closing his speech with passionate tone inviting his fellow legislators, "we came to ask that this project that is a bad joke of a bad government sink."

He finished what has been considered the best speech of the year in Colombia almost pleadingly inviting congressmen to work for “a tax statute that is just as mandated by the Constitution, progressive, progressive, equitable and sufficient to have a vigorous state capable of paying him to Colombians what Colombians give us in effort and hope. ”

“Let's have a moment of dignity, decorum, and greatness, let's sit down to work for Colombia, which here we have only done for years and decades for the privileged, but millions and millions of Colombians expect an answer that can be today. Let's sink this project.”

However, a few hours later, Senator Iván Marulanda himself tricked on the social network Twitter: “Despite my call to sink the Government Tax Project, it was approved. The economic commissions scrutinized the #ReformaTributaria without discussion or debate. An insult to people protesting in the streets.” His speech was useless, rather than to arouse the manifestations of citizenship on social networks by a political class that did not listen to the message.