2024-04-21 22:08:00
At least 500,000 people protested this Sunday in the main cities of Colombia, in the largest demonstration that Gustavo Petro’s government has faced since he came to power twenty months ago and at a time when his popularity is in the red.
The diverse group of conveners included medical organizations, the opposition, centrist political forces, and some former leftist allies with various clamors: they reject his projects to nationalize the health service, his initiative to convene a National Constituent Assembly and the peace negotiations with armed groups that have not stopped the violence.
“I voted for change, for Petro, but we continue with the same thing. I march because I still think that Colombia has some hope,” Martha Estrada, a 64-year-old pensioner with a tricolor hat in Bogotá, told AFP.
In the capital, the rain did not stop the protesters and tens of thousands gathered in the central Plaza de Bolívar, next to the presidential headquarters, AFP confirmed.
Petro came to power almost two years ago as the first leftist to govern a country traditionally run by conservative elites.
With 60% disapproval, according to the pollster Invamer, the president has been losing support from political forces in Congress and also in the public square, where he is usually very active.
In Cali (southwest), Medellín (northwest) and Barranquilla (north) the protesters joined in with Colombian flags, white t-shirts and a cry in unison: “Out with Petro!”
In the main capitals there were a total of nearly half a million protesters, according to official figures. In Medellín alone, some 350,000 people came out to protest, according to the Personería.
Petro, however, estimated the number of protesters at 250,000, and assured in X that several concentrations were “weak” and that their “main objective” was to “overthrow the government of change” with a “soft coup.”
“March of the white coats”
It is not the first demonstration against the government, but it is the most massive.
One of his reform projects, health, divided the country when the president began to implement several of its central axes administratively due to the difficulties of obtaining support in Congress.
The president aspires to reduce the participation of private companies in the provision of health services, and in recent days several of the entities that serve as intermediaries of resources between the State and hospitals have intervened to control their budget.
Experts agree that the system is bankrupt and must be reformed, but some question the way the government intends to do it.
Called the “white coat march,” the doctors expressed their “disagreement with the current management of the health system by the government.”
According to Invamer, 56% of those surveyed in April rejected that the government “is intervening in some of the EPS (Health Promotion Entities) in Colombia to directly manage the system.”
“I am here as a citizen, a doctor and a Colombian. (…) As a doctor you see the deterioration because there are no medications to give to patients, because patients delay in receiving care,” said Dr. Julio Rivero, 35, in Bogotá .
Protesters in different cities carried banners alluding to insecurity, and the violence of rebels and drug traffickers in the countryside.
“This man protects the thugs (criminals) of the guerrilla more than the good people of this country. (…) It is time to unite so that he feels that we are not the rich, we are all, the working middle class, that we need change,” said Betty Ospina, a 67-year-old protester.
The ambitious “Total Peace” policy with which the government hopes to defuse six decades of armed conflict is suffering setbacks.
Their detractors reject the concessions that armed groups receive in the midst of peace negotiations, despite the frequent violations of the agreement and the few signs of willingness to lay down their arms.
Negotiations with the rebels of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have suffered several crises due to murders, kidnappings and attacks on public forces.
70% of Colombians believe that the country is “getting worse,” according to Invamer.
The protests also come in the midst of a water crisis due to a serious drought that has more than 10 million people in water rationing in Bogotá. The rains returned over the weekend, but they have not been enough, according to authorities.
The president ordered the suspension of energy exports to Ecuador and on Friday he decreed a “civic day” with the request to save water and energy and “go out this weekend to places in other hydrographic basins to reduce consumption pressure” in Bogotá.
The measure was seen by some Petro critics as a blow to the call for protests this Sunday.
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