The elections are over. The country remains.
We are still neighbors, co-workers, friends, family. We continue walking the same streets, facing many of the same problems and dreaming, deep down, with very similar desires: to live in peace, progress, take care of those we love and feel that our children can have a better future.
Today we have an elected president in Colombia. There are those who are celebrating and those who feel frustration. There is relief in some sectors and fear in others. There are those who see the result as hope and those who perceive it as a threat.
But regardless of the outcome, we all face the same challenge: how to rebuild a country deeply fractured and trapped in incomplete ways of looking at reality.
For some time we have seen how political differences transform into personal disqualifications; how the public conversation has been filled with indignation, fear or rage, and how it is increasingly oriented toward pointing out blame rather than building solutions. More and more citizens no longer see anyone who thinks differently as a democratic adversary, but as a threat.
Societies do not break up when differences appear. Societies begin to break down when the bridges that allow us to live with them disappear. And the bridges begin with something as simple—and as difficult—as the decision to listen to each other.
That is why it is important to pay attention to the fears that emerged during this campaign. In broad sectors of the right there was concern about a possible deterioration of democracy and the economic situation in a Cepeda government. Today, however, when there is already an elected president, it is worth focusing especially on the concerns of those who did not vote for him. When listening to them, two fears appear again and again: for life and physical integrity, and for the possible loss of rights. Its intensity reveals the level of uncertainty that affects a large part of society. Ignoring that feeling only deepens existing fractures.
Democracy does not end on election day. That day is just beginning a more important and even more difficult task: governing. And governing is more than solving problems and executing projects. Governing is generating meaning, building a shared future and managing differences.
What happened on Sunday is an example of the challenge that lies ahead. While President Petro called to wait for the final results of the scrutiny, Cepeda recognized the pre-count, but announced challenges to the questioned tables. De la Espriella, for his part, celebrated the victory and assured that he will govern for all Colombians, including those who did not vote for him. Three different reactions to the same event. But they all lead to the same question: will we be able to process our differences within democratic rules and without turning the opponent into an enemy?
Colombia needs more than an electoral victory: it needs a citizen victory. An electoral victory that does not become a citizen meeting is, in the long run, a half-victory. Expecting that meeting to come only from the government of the day would be a mistake. It also depends on citizens who decide every day to cooperate instead of compete, to care instead of to ignore, to listen before judging, to understand before labeling. And that is precisely where the most important task begins.
Now it’s time to knit. Weave confidence. Weave conversations. Weave bridges. Weave community. Knit common purposes. Because no one builds a country alone.
JULIANA MEJÍA
