By Luis Nieto

Since 2006, the British publication “The Economist” analyzes 60 indicators in 167 countries, 165 of them members of the United Nations. Of the 197 countries integrated into the UN, 29 are excluded from this Index. Countries like Andorra, Kiribati, Micronesia and others, with small territories, small population and resources, generally dedicated to tourism. Also excluded are Somalia and South Sudan, which are countries disorganized by internal conflicts, which have affected any possibility of acting as a national unit.

According to the score received annually, since 2006, when the analysis begins, only two countries retain their position among those living under a regime of perfect democracy: Uruguay and Costa Rica. Uruguay ranks 13th, the highest in Latin America. To avoid suspicion, we emphasize that the United States is in 26th place, classified as a poor democracy.

The list is headed by Norway. With this country we share a score in Electoral process and Pluralism (10), and we are 0.59 points above Norway, in terms of Civil Rights. In this parameter we have the same score as New Zealand and Costa Rica, and we are above all other countries with full democracies.

What other issue can be more decisive to qualify a country as democratic without considering the guarantee of civic rights of citizens? Democracy is weak because it depends on the validity of all the other rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the laws. Our perception of ourselves suffers from a double distortion: the political struggle, as inseparable from the difference of ideas and projects inherent to the pluralism that ensures democracy, and the slowness in producing a generational change in political life. The latter delays, for its part, the life of the political parties with respect to the interests of society, which follow, in one way or another, the realities of the world.

The latter may have gotten a bit of a jump in the last election. Not only because a young, intelligent, empathetic president arrived in Uruguay. Mujica was at the other generational extreme, but his disruptive style, and having respected the rules of the democratic game, opened the doors to youth, and not only to youth but to a majority that in all parties needed to break the image that we had made of ourselves.

The virtuosity that the parameters exposed at the beginning of the note can have is the merit of previous generations, when Uruguay debated with itself, but today there is no debate that is not around a specific fact: the convenience or not of the litter bins, the police measures to stop the violence, and the systematic hinder of public policies. End of repertoire. If we are going to continue discussing and analyzing what is happening to us from an unalterable political position, we are lost. A good part of Uruguayans find it comfortable to proclaim themselves on the left or feel like a conservative, as if that was the answer.

What we consider the left, in Uruguay and the rest of the world, is a viscous term. To be, you have to sign a contract that obliges the user to comply with all the definitions of the founding fathers. But did Marx think the same as Lenin, Pol Pot , or Fidel Castro? At what point and in the face of what dilemma do we stop being on the left to be a skinny, a worm, or a facho, depending on the country in which we live?

The emotional result of this way of separating definitions has led us to disbelieve in the political system, which made a small country with limited productive resources a respected country in the world. This kind of political » mobbing » was enough to embark on the adventure of armed struggle, stemming from the conviction that there was a shorter way to solve the structural problems that we saw as insurmountable after the crisis of the governments of the political party “Colorados”, that led them to the loss of the government in 1959. The experience of the Sierra Maestra, in Cuba, made us believe that there was a shorter path, which required the enormous sacrifice that the armed struggle implied and implied.

The passage of time, and the interpretation that must be made of it, to offer to the society a safe path to the development of its social capacity, despite everything that has happened, leaves us, undoubtedly, a lesson: not everything was lost in 1959 when we had a society in crisis, and, on the other hand, a generational paradigm that told us otherwise. We chose that other thing, satisfied with the incipient sizzle of a revolution that seemed more in line with the generational change that the country was claiming. But youth is not always capable of making a long-term reading, which implies the great intellectual effort on the part of the political parties that support and give answers to the challenges of each time.

The image of Che and Haedo, drinking mate in the house of the person who was, at that time, the president of the National Council of Government, the Executive Power at that time, summed up and summarizes everything that can represent, in politics, the dialogue between the old and new. Che made a very clear recommendation to that generation that saw in Montevideo the Sierra Maestra of Uruguay with green undulating hills.

Today we are once again standing in front of a situation that questions us, that forces us to ask ourselves if we are willing to maintain and work to rise in the indicators reflected in the work of » The Economist», or to let ourselves be carried away by novelism and the verbiage of the circumstantial. The world may be on the verge of a new world war, again the European scenario is the one that offers the possibility of living an apocalyptic future.

The Uruguayan political elites must draw a lesson from what is happening in the world, and train their parties in a long-term perspective. Some countries have. Days ago, Finland has made it known to the public that it not only lives in the present, and trains its youth in a quality education, but has also worked quietly to protect its citizens against any contingency. Independent television showed that Finland is in a position, in just 72 hours, to put 80% of its population in comfortable shelters, even equipped with Olympic swimming pools, in the event of a generalized atomic war. And it continues to work in shelters built 20 meters deep, distributed throughout its territory.

Finland ranks third in the 2021 “The Economist” Index. Obviously it is not a country with a warmongering vocation, but its political leaders have known very well that their role and that of the political parties is to provide their citizens with the greatest possible freedoms, and protect them from circumstances that may threaten their future. Are we in a position to do the same?