Colombia: manifest opposition against the management of Petro

BOGOTÁ (AP) – More than 3,000 opponents of Gustavo Petro’s government demonstrated Wednesday in the streets of downtown Bogotá with Colombian flags and signs reading “Get out of Petro!”, rejecting his management and the reforms that encourage modify the health, pension and work systems.

“It didn’t seem good to me, he wants to end everything that has been built in all these years. It’s the worst thing that has happened in Colombia, the left is not good here or anywhere else” , Aida Villamil López, a micro-entrepreneur in advertising, told The Associated Press while holding a sign with the phrase “Our health is not affected”.

Since Petro took power in August 2022 as Colombia’s first left-wing president, the opposition has taken to the streets. However, this time the protest comes a day after Petro gauged his political support in nationwide mobilizations and defended his reforms from the presidential balcony in front of hundreds of supporters.

Opposition marches were called in capitals across the country such as Bogotá, Medellín, Bucaramanga, Barranquilla, Cartagena and Cúcuta.

Hernán Cadavid, a congressman from the opposition Democratic Center party, assured the Associated Press that with his speech from the palace, the president was warning Congress “either they approve of what I bring, or people are with Me”.

Petro came to power in Colombia, a country traditionally ruled by conservatives and moderates, with the promise of governing for minorities and the poor who in the country reach 39% of the population, according to official figures.

Among the package of reforms that the government seeks to implement, only the one that aims to reform the health system to guarantee, according to Petro, medical services in the poorest and most remote areas, as well as to give more resource control to the state, is fully known. . But the proposal has been criticized for its lack of clarity about its economic viability and the role of health promotion companies (EPS), which are usually private and are currently tasked with contracting medical centers. The Congress is about to begin its discussion.

On the streets of Bogotá, 70-year-old Jaime Fernando Vanegas warned that the reform could “destroy” the health system instead of fixing it and said the changes proposed by the government would set the country back decades. “The elders know that, the state managing health has failed,” he told AP.

Petro explained the day before that the labor reform will aim for “stability of work” for more Colombians and will grant workers night surcharges from six in the afternoon and on weekends, ensuring that employers must “give in to their selfishness” and not “enslave”.

For Cadavid, this possible law is in addition to a tax reform approved last December with heavier burdens for the richest and the hydrocarbon sector could end up “stifling the productive sectors of Colombia” and generating more unemployment because the businessmen, who are mostly small and medium-sized, could not cover the expenses.