Petro bets on the streets what he won in the corridors of power

Gustavo Petro has said, time and time again, that he values ​​his legitimacy based on the popular demonstrations. “This victory for God and for the People and their history. “Today is the day of the streets and squares,” he said upon winning the presidential elections in June 2022. “From the streets to the polls,” he said months before, seeking to translate the unrest with the Government of Iván Duque, precisely, in his victory. As president, however, his repeated calls to leave have had little response. That, in itself, is challenging for his current call, to take to the streets to support his Government this Wednesday May Day, when the unions make their traditional display for Labor Day; Indigenous organizations that arrived in Bogotá since Friday have already joined in. A challenge that only increases because the images will be contrasted with those of the marches against the Government last Sunday, April 21, which had behind them forces such as the opposition Uribismo, medical unions or sectors of the reserves of the military forces.

But before defining that result, what is clear with the call for marches is that the president has regained the initiative. It seemed that he was losing it, since the images of crowds criticizing some of his most visible proposals, or even calling for his departure from power, occurred a few days after a resounding legislative defeat, that of the virtual collapse of his health reform. Without legislative majorities to carry out his proposals to reformulate and rename the social security system, with his proposal for total peace failing on several fronts, and with polls showing support that is barely around a third of the electorate, Petro could be cornered. But the days following the marches have shown the opposite, that the president regains the political initiative. This Wednesday’s march is one more step in this, and one in the space that he likes the most.

The most visible of the previous steps, in contrast, have occurred in the corridors of power and in closed-door meetings, far from the places the president calls for in his public speeches. The constituent power or the call to the people indicate a search for a more direct democracy than the one that has made progress in its pension and health reforms. In the first, an agreement cooked up in private meetings with the majority sectors of two groups that have oscillated between the ruling party and the opposition, those of the liberal senators and La U, allowed him to advance his idea of ​​changing the scheme that exists in Colombia. since 30 years ago. In the second, meetings also without microphones with the majority of the Health Promotion Entities, EPS, produced a new reform text, in which these insurers survive, unlike the initial proposal, with significant fixed income and with fewer risks and functions. In both cases, the Government showed an openness to negotiate and give in behind closed doors, led by officials other than the president. His Ministers of the Interior and Labor were fundamental for the first, of Health for the second, and the omnipresent Laura Sarabia in both cases.

Although the two news items gave additional air to the Government – the president, absent from those closed spaces -, they reflect a traditional way of governing, of agreements with other actors in power, be they politicians, businessmen or unions. That is not the style claimed by a president who has not only called on the streets as a source of legitimacy, but has proposed a constituent process that flows through spaces in which these actors have less power. “The constituent process is to give power to the population so that citizens can decide,” he said in a well-known speech in Cali on March 20, when he launched an idea that has concentrated emotions. “Calling the people to mobilization, to the streets, to debate, to exercise the constituent power that can already be exercised at levels that the 1991 Constitution allows, which are defined as open town halls, which are current citizen participation mechanisms. That is why I say that we begin a constituent process and it begins at the base of society and in all the towns of Colombia,” he explained in an interview with Time.

That same line was highlighted by his Council of Ministers, meeting in Paipa this weekend, before the president was present on Sunday afternoon. One of the conclusions of the meeting demonstrates this. “A call was made to strengthen the connection and participation of citizens in Government decision-making, in neighborhoods in large cities and rural areas of the country,” reads the press release published at noon this Sunday. After the meeting, at the beginning of this Sunday night, it was not Petro, but three members of the cabinet who gave statements. The Minister of Labor, Gloria Inés Ramírez, who concluded the intervention with a new call to march: “For peace, for life, for social reforms, for health, for education, for decent and decent work, everyone and everyone out on the street. See you on May Day!

All this reinforces the commitment that Petro has made to the streets. The achievements of the previous week are at stake with the call on Wednesday, and also with his speeches, such as the resounding celebration of the progress of the pension in which he reiterated that he will seek to have the bill approved definitively with its parameters, instead of those with whom the Government negotiated with the liberal and La U senators. Ultimately, it is about defending its proposal for a more direct democracy, defined in the streets and not in the corridors of power, thus its more recent events have occurred precisely within the framework of that representative democracy. Two spaces that, however, feed off each other: the annoyance caused among liberal congressmen by that announcement will tend to grow if the call is languid, since in an electoral democracy politicians have an incentive to align themselves with the opinion that helps them elect. What will happen if the Government manages to get more spontaneous people onto the streets.

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