We all know the popular saying that consists of scaring children who don't sleep with the arrival of the bogeyman who takes them away or eats them. It is collected by some lullabies or cradle songs.
Go to sleep, child, / go to sleep now, / here comes the bogeyman / and he will eat you.Sleep, child, sleep, / sleep, here comes the bogeyman, / and he takes the children / who sleep little.
This creation of a fictitious fear is also sometimes used with adults when it is of interest. That is what I believe exists now with Podemos. There is an almost perfect parallel between this secular tradition and the possible arrival of this party to the institutions. I will try to demonstrate it.
Adults could be identified with what in the jargon of Podemos would be the politicians of the caste, related media, and spokespersons of financial capitalism who may fear losing part of their privileges. The child would logically be the people, who are considered underage. The dangers of the bogeyman would be fundamentally Chavism, populism, and a program impossible to carry out, especially in the economic aspect. This would lead us to disaster, which we would identify with taking the child away or eating him. Let's look at those dangers.
If I were Venezuelan, I would be upset with the claim that they are Chavistas and want to impose the model of that country on us. Apart from the fact that this is impossible because models are not exportable, I believe that there are colonialist remnants and feelings of superiority and undervaluation of a sovereign people, who, like everyone else, have the perfect right to choose their destiny.
Regarding populism, we would have to talk at length about the meaning of the term (the term populism is not even included in the DRAE, but populist is), but it is enough to know that here it is used with a pejorative sense of deceiving the people. It is curious that many of those who do it practice the saying of seeing the splinter in someone else's eye and not seeing the beam in their own.
With respect to the unfeasibility of their program, it would be enough to refer to the degree of compliance of those presented by the governing parties, all have had breaches, especially the last one of the PP. On the other hand, and although I do not defend that the electoral programs are not viable or are not fulfilled (I have always maintained that without compliance with programs our sovereignty is stolen), it seems to me that it is a venial sin that, in the circumstances in which they presented themselves to the European elections and the objectives they pursued, they put a little utopia. The program for the next elections to which it can be presented is being elaborated and the moment to value it will be when it is known.
As a person who voted for Podemos (I made the reasons public in an article in this newspaper), all this outrages me because it seems like contempt for all its voters. We cannot say that the people know what they vote for when they vote A, because I am interested, and they do not know when they vote B or C.
These disqualifications come fundamentally from the right, but on occasions they have also been made by members of the PSOE, which bothers me more, because I believe that the left must have more values than the mere conquest of power at any price. In addition, the polls are showing, as a trend, the end of bipartisanship and the difficulty of obtaining absolute majorities. A policy of dialogues and agreements will be imposed. But perhaps with the particularity that not all of them are going to be agreed, as until now (with the exception perhaps only of IU in some cases) by the elites of the parties to distribute areas of influence, but that, on many occasions, the approval of the bases around a program will be taken into account. It seems to me that a cordial atmosphere between diverse parties, regardless of their differences, would be the most recommendable.
At this point, a series of questions occur to me. Do we know why the child cries or does not sleep? Are we sure that scaring him with the bogeyman is going to be the solution and he is going to sleep well? What if he doesn't sleep because something hurts, because he is sick or cold or hot? Wouldn't it be better to find out the reason for his insomnia or his crying and try to find the real solution? I have the impression that this analysis is not being carried out or, at least I, do not detect it.
I am sure that all these disqualifications will be made because it is estimated that they will give some benefit. However, it seems to me that they demonstrate that many still do not understand anything of what I believe is happening. The child has grown up and does not need stories, but reasoning and serious politics appropriate to his age and that gives him a solution to his problems. From this point of view, I would like to hear the criticisms, I myself have them.
Podemos is in a stage of freshness and honeymoon. But this will end, and although Sabina likes (and I, of course), that all moons are honeymoons, life teaches us that it cannot be so. In the European Parliament he is doing things with which we may agree or not, the same happens with his way of constituting himself, with the program he is elaborating, the measures he will be taking as a party or if he comes to govern institutions.
I would like the bogeyman to come to politics. Yes, let the bogeyman come, but with another meaning of those given by the dictionary. The bogeyman of head, of brain, of intelligence, of talent, of judgment, of thought, of reflection, of argumentation. It is what I have humbly tried to do in my stage as a teacher: to conjugate the verb to think as the most important for the education of a person. Authentic democracy, knowledge and reflection would fix many evils, but there are still many who think that the fishing ground of demagogy yields more.
Diego Arrebola Gómez
