The title is an old saying that tells us that people do not learn from the mistakes of others, and that only when they make their own mistakes, even if they have seen their unfortunate consequences in others, do they assimilate a life lesson.
This, in politics, is much more common than one might imagine. Although in that world, there are even those who make the same mistake more than once.
Roberto Sánchez, without having a solid party, without greater scrolls or history than his questioned time through a repudiated Congress and a ministry in the times of Pedro Castillo, achieved – thanks to an opportunism that allowed him to take full advantage of the Castilian pocket – a political position and a vote that, not being his own, put him at the forefront of all anti-Fujimorism, regardless of political color.
Today, after a series of contradictions and zigzagging positions, he has preferred to adopt the same attitude and the fraudist position that Fujimorism raised in 2021, precisely, against Pedro Castillo, and that was so rejected by the population until this campaign, in which he continued to remind Keiko Fujimori of his “piconería.”
Sánchez uses all the legal tricks he can to try to delay the proclamation of results, and scratch the pot that allows him, at any cost, to bring positions closer together, trying to evade a reality that already crushes him, as in the case of Rafael López Aliaga, although the former mayor had more valid reasons for his legal fight.
The non-digitization of foreign records raises eyebrows and generates suspicion. But even in that, which could lead Sánchez to a ‘victim’ position, he makes a mistake, and becomes a ‘victimizer’, when he wants to annul the entire vote of all Peruvians abroad, whose families here will pass the bill.
Sánchez has every right to call for peaceful marches, as Rafael López Aliaga did many times, and through the streets of Lima, without the Municipality of Lima opposing or blocking streets and accesses; but it makes a mistake by scaring people with the labels of “the taking of Lima” or invoking the anger of the population, which was used in the past to promote violent mobilizations.
Sánchez’s claim will suffer the same fate as those of Keiko or López Aliaga, and the population’s rejection will be the same. But the difference is that Sánchez, who is neither reelected nor has a solid party, will cost him the leadership he achieved and which would have made him one of the heads of the opposition. It has been rapidly delegitimized and will lose what it has gained very quickly.
And others who do not learn are those from the Public Prosecutor’s Office who file complaints against JP followers without further foundation, which do not help calm things down and, on the contrary, fuel the fire and victimize those reported.
*El Comercio opens its pages to the exchange of ideas and reflections. In this plural framework, the Diario does not necessarily agree with the opinions of the columnists who sign them, although it always respects them.
