By Aura Isabel Olano Correa
A few months into his government, President Gustavo Petro Urrego began to summon the ‘people’ to the streets to defend the labor, health and pension reforms before the Congress of the Republic, without there being even an outline of the respective texts, completely unknown by the same members of his political coalition. That is to say, that he intended that before conceiving the projects, they were approved blindly.
By wanting to use those who had voted for him, to take to the streets to defend the unknown, appealing to blind faith, he sought to unduly pressure the Congress of the Republic to approve his reforms without any modification, as if It was about dogmas.
Through his Twitter, he said over and over again that ‘the public square is also a place for discussion’, but there was nothing to discuss, because his has been a populist monologue, like the one called balconazo, in the Plaza de Armas, which was expected by a large crowd, but it was not like that.
Recently, with great defiance, he once again summoned the ‘people’ to defend his complex reforms and, once again, notify congressmen that they were straying from his fold, even through his own fault, since after requesting the formal resignation of his cabinet Through his restless Twitter, he terminated the agreed political coalition.
Upon winning the election, given his authoritarian character, President Petro Urrego perhaps thought that, at the time of his arrival at the Casa de Nariño, Colombians should obey him and that his reforms, not yet in progress, would have to be applauded. something like “let there be light and light was made”.
On the first of May on the famous balcony, the head of state spoke of the importance for the working class of the pension, labor and health reforms, the latter the one that has received the most criticism. Apparently, for him, the only workers that exist in Colombia are those affiliated to the unions, who would be the beneficiaries, precisely, of the languid labor reform. Likewise, he considers that the people are only made up of his ideological co-religionists, who owe him loyalty. And of the vast majority of Colombians, who do not agree with his reforms, with his speech, with the lurches of his government, he says that he belongs to the ‘elite’. As if they were not citizens, workers, businessmen, entrepreneurs who generate employment and wealth for the country through the high taxes that he has imposed.
Well, those other millions of workers and fighters for a better Colombia have shown that they are also coming out to speak out against the reforms that the president wants to impose by force, no matter how harmful they may be for the country, for the treasury, for each citizen and their future, especially for the new generations.
The massive marches, especially the one on June 20, which spontaneously took place in the main cities of the country, are sending a direct message to President Petro: that they do not agree with the unconsulted reforms, that they need consensus national, without ideological distinction; that the country is adrift in terms of security, that extortion, kidnapping, drug trafficking, crops for illicit use, micro-trafficking, among other serious problems, have intensified. That the president himself cannot continue blaming “the owners of capital and the media” for the bad time of his reforms, such as the labor reform, which today agonized in Congress, as he said on his Twitter . Today’s marchers also demanded respect from the president for the press and for the separation of powers.
Petro must govern without arrogance, with the entire country and for all Colombians, not just for a minority that blindly applauds him. Today’s mobilizations are showing him that the reforms and the government are also disapproved of on the streets.
The current president, from his comfortable seat of opposition acid, believed that to govern was to do his will, he forgot that Colombia, despite its difficulties, is a democracy that does not admit impositions or radicalism.