What is the “social forgiveness” that Gustavo Petro, president-elect of Colombia, speaks of?

Gustavo Petro sends a message to Rodolfo Hernández and the opposition 3:53 (CNN Spanish) — Gustavo Petro, president-elect of Colombia, has spoken many times about “social forgiveness”, an amnesty proposal that has generated controversy and surprises, and his attempts to explain it have been criticized by his opponents. The issue became relevant during the presidential campaign when it was revealed that Petro’s brother met with politicians convicted of corruption in prison and the candidate referred to the concept again. But what exactly is this “social forgiveness” that Petro has proposed, and why is it already generating controversy? In front of the Colombian Senate, in August 2021, Petro explained that his proposal comes from the concept of forgiveness put forward by the French philosopher Jaques Derrida (1930-2004). What does this “social forgiveness” consist of? “(Derrida) says that in certain historical epochs, very occasionally, a society can have the imaginary, creative and virtuous act of great social forgiveness for its members,” Petro said, adding that this act has the same “generation of social creation” than revolutions. “Could we think that it is possible that Colombia, after two centuries of perpetual wars, has reached a moment of generalized social forgiveness? I think so,” he added. Who is affected by this widespread forgiveness? To the perpetrators, “regardless of whether they committed amnestiable and pardonable political crimes or committed crimes against humanity,” Petro maintains, adding that the specific name of this pardon, whether or not it is amnesty, will depend on the laws. Rodolfo Hernández’s followers react to his defeat in the elections 4:38 What are the conditions? “Social forgiveness is an expression of society in search of reconciliation. It has a motor: to end a conflict in Colombia. And therefore the prison is not the fundamental piece, (it) is the heart of the human being,” he told him. Petro to CNN’s Fernando Ramos in May. “If we are able to forgive a series of events that we would say are unforgivable in recent Colombian history, then we will be able to reconcile them.” But to grant this social forgiveness “which is not divine, it is human,” Petro pointed out, there must be certain “historical conditions,” based on a prior process of “truth and reparation for the victims, through specific mechanisms.” On this issue, Petro had already pointed out in August 2021 that “before an amnesty there must be a return of all the property to the dispossessed and the complete truth.” The controversial visit At the beginning of April, Colombian media revealed that Juan Fernando Petro, brother of then-candidate Petro, visited former senator Iván Moreno, convicted of corruption, at the Bogota Metropolitan Prison and Penitentiary Complex “La Picota”. The revelation caused a controversy in Colombia, and Petro assured that his brother is not part of his campaign and that the meeting took place independently. “I did not send anyone to speak with Iván Moreno. They are the prisoners who asked to speak with the inter-ecclesial commission for Justice and Peace. That didn’t even cross my mind,” he said on his Twitter account. On April 11, referring to the visit in an interview on W Radio, Petro again mentioned the concept of social forgiveness, pointing out that Iván Moreno “has suggested that we be the builder of something that I have proposed called ‘forgiveness social’. And that is being discussed inside the prisons.” Francia Márquez: We are going to eradicate patriarchy in Colombia 3:52 Moreno was sentenced in 2015 to 14 years in prison for linking him to the “hiring carousel” corruption scandal, according to the Efe agency. Meanwhile, his brother Samuel Moreno, former mayor of Bogotá, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for delivering bribes in the district health network contract for 67,000 million pesos (about 22 million dollars), within the same operation. The controversy opens The proposal of “social forgiveness” has generated criticism against Petro, especially from his rivals and after knowing the meeting between Petro’s brother and Moreno. “Your former partners and political bosses (who are in jail today x corrupt [sic]), they have a pact with you that you yourself put in evidence to give them such a “social pardon” in exchange for votes. The country already knows it,” Federico Gutiérrez said on his Twitter account, when he was still a candidate for the presidency of Colombia for the Team for Colombia coalition. “Social forgiveness? Zero tolerance with those who seek votes with corruption,” said Sergio Fajardo, now a former presidential candidate. But Petro says he is raising the discussion from the sphere of social reconciliation and not from government action. “Social forgiveness has nothing to do with with the juridical, it is born from society”, he told Fernando Ramos. “It has nothing to do with the Government, which is the one that creates laws such as pardons or sentence reductions”. In mid-April, Petro refused to be using the ” social forgiveness” to obtain political gains, assuring that he will go to court to defend himself, and offered more details about his project from his Twitter account. “Does social forgiveness mean that the corrupt get out of jail or their sentences are lowered? No way. On the contrary. Social forgiveness implies that all the corrupt go to jail without exception, and pay their sentences. Corruption is the breaking of forgiveness,” he said. “Social forgiveness is not granted by a president, it is society that grants it and I believe that, in exchange for truth and reparation, the greatest beneficiaries of that forgiveness would be [el expresidente Álvaro] Uribe Vélez and his friends and thousands of soldiers of all ranks,” he said in another tweet. An old idea of ​​Petro But beyond these controversies, Petro has been working on this idea of ​​”social forgiveness” for a long time. In his essay “Forgiveness is solidarity”, included in 2002 in the book “Political Culture and Forgiveness”, published by the Universidad del Rosario, the former mayor of Bogotá argues that “in a country where, unfortunately, the unforgivable is already part of that daily life, It occurs to me that every day, at every moment, we should have a daily forgiveness that would annul the unforgivable”. And he adds: “The minimum of forgiveness coincides with the minimum of a pact of solidarity to build a nation without exclusions that we could finally call , unequivocally, democratic.” With information from Fernando Ramos of CNN