Carlos Andrés Pérez trained as a consultant in Spain and Germany. He is part of the first generation of political consultants in Latin America who did not come from other disciplines, but rather trained specifically to help win campaigns and govern well. Most of his predecessors came from the world of advertising. He has worked in more than 20 years as a consultant throughout the region, spanning most countries from Mexico to Chile.
Have you experienced many changes in political consulting?
Many people, starting with the recognition of the profession, initially thought that what a consultant could do was the same as what publicists or journalists hired by campaigns or governments had done. It was difficult to give political consultancy its place, to show that advertising and communication would continue and were important, but they were not everything.
In that transition, how did it go with advertisers and journalists?
It was not easy either, many saw the consultants as a threat, as someone who came to take away their work or the prominence they had, it was a process in which we gradually adapted and today a campaign or a government cannot be conceived without that triad.
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With this evolution also came new ways of communicating…
Of course, for example, in my first book, published in 2005, I talked about how to use fax machines in campaigns; today these machines are in museums. My generation had to make the transition from mass politics in person to mass politics online…
¿Con Twitter, Facebook, Instagram?
First with SMS and then with social networks, which turned the way leaders interact with citizens upside down. It brought huge advantages, brought politics closer to the people, made them part of our daily lives, for better and for worse.
Explain to me that ‘for bad’?
We were able to realize that politicians were human beings of flesh and blood, just like us, no matter how much of a leader they were. But we also began to learn about their weaknesses, many of which were due to their human condition, and the worst thing about this is that those who were in charge of exposing them were the politicians themselves. It became a race to see who could bring out the most negative things about the other, and that had terrible consequences.
Which?
The triumph of lies. Elections are no longer won by the candidates’ proposals, or even by the charisma they may have. Today, the winner is whoever moves the most negative fibers of the voter, regardless of whether they resort to the most twisted stories. I was recently talking to some colleagues about this and one of them lamented how some of the new generations of consultants have dedicated themselves to insisting to their clients that the campaign is won by filling the voter with fear of the opponent.
Do you think that can be reversed?
I don’t think so in the immediate future, because it is something that yields results: it allows unscrupulous politicians and consultants to govern more quickly, as easily as saying that their opponent is a communist or a pedophile. They know that the time in a campaign is very short and that in the society in which we live, scandal prevails. It is the same logic as reality shows.
As?
In reality shows, the rudest, most abusive or aggressive contestant is the one who gets the most ratings, which is why they are removed from the last place. The difference is that the candidates who use these techniques will no longer be able to separate themselves from this, they will continue to govern in the same way, they will need to continue polarizing throughout their mandate, to be viable.
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2024-09-26 04:35:39
#Politics #logic #reality #shows
