The union of restaurant and bar owners protests in Bogotá for the closure of their businesses this week.Mauricio Duenas Castaneda / EFE
Discontent is increasing in Colombian society. The tax reform promoted by President Iván Duque, the project with which he intended to carve his name in stone, adds more and more detractors, despite the fact that most experts consider it necessary. Workers' centrals had called a national strike for this Wednesday, to which civil organizations joined, against the tax increase, but an aggressive third wave of covid has come to complicate the situation even more. The main cities have returned to confinement when a month ago it was felt that the worst of the pandemic had already passed. In this context, with hospitals on the brink of collapse, even some of the most critical of Duque believe that it is not sensible to take to the streets.The fact is that in Colombia it has become expensive to protest.
Duque, who has one year left in office, is going through a complex situation. He presented a reform knowing that he will have many stones in the way. The question now is whether with those pruning that it will have to apply to be approved in Congress, it will achieve 2% of GDP, the most ambitious tax collection in the last 30 years. Several political forces, especially those that represent the sectors most heeled to the left within the coalition of the presidential candidate Gustavo Petro, even propose to completely sink it and demand that it withdraw it due to inconvenience. That was the president's legacy, his touchstone. It would be the first reform in Latin America motivated by the coronavirus crisis. With that money, he would also prevent sovereign debt from becoming a junk bond. A ball of oxygen before the markets.
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Duque proposes a tax increase to cover the fiscal gap of the pandemic in Colombia
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The problem is that this project, which Duque describes as social because it supposes, among others, a permanent basic income for the most vulnerable, has less and less political support.
The president's own party, the Democratic Center, a conservative party, has proposed lowering it.
The party, which defends that the reform is necessary, assumes that it does not arrive at the right time and does not want to go to the 2022 elections with the tremendous burden that supporting such an unpopular measure would entail.
"The government is in a difficult situation," says Yann Basset, professor of Political Science at the Universidad del Rosario, in Bogotá. “A tax reform in a pandemic and one year after the elections is too much. Duque is losing control of the schedule much faster than he thought ”. It is enough to highlight the criticisms of his mentor, Álvaro Uribe, the figure on whom Colombian politics has gravitated in the last two decades. Uribe, the undisputed leader of the Democratic Center despite his resignation as senator due to his problems with justice, said in an interview on Blu Radio that last week he called Duque to show him his disappointment with the reform. More than the content, at the moment, late in his opinion, in which it is being promulgated. A gruff-tempered character, used to making himself heard,He assured that this time he was not paid attention when he warned that the project would harm the party. He said he agreed with the president's social policy and his diagnosis of the country's depleted finances, but he does not believe that this was the correct path.
The paralysis of the tax, which analysts begin to consider dead in the gatherings, despite the fact that it is just beginning its way in Congress, is crossed with a rebound in infections by covid-19. This week was the deadliest day since the beginning of the pandemic, with 465 deaths. The most important cities in the country have returned to curfews, lockdowns and prohibition. Bogotá, a city that seemed to begin to return to normality, at least post-pandemic normality, that concept that we are just experiencing, returned to cloistered. The rebound coincides with the delay in the vaccination plan. Duque's goal of vaccinating 70% of the population (35 million inhabitants) this year is unattainable at this rate.
The situation has called into question the national strike called for Wednesday that, some social sectors, hoped that it would again serve as a fuse to ignite the protests that hit the country at the end of 2019. The bulk of the opposition to Duque, however, , don't force the machine and ask people to stay home. The progressive mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López, considers that marching at this moment "is an attempt on life." Sergio Fajardo, a centrist candidate, called for other protest alternatives.
The pandemic has hit the Colombian economy with violence. In the hardest moments, the residents of the popular neighborhoods placed red rags on the windows to ask for help. They had nothing to eat. The buildings were stained that color. The country suffered a 6.8% drop in GDP in 2020, the biggest drop in recorded history, and unemployment, accustomed to being high, reached 21.4% at its worst.
Opinion polls indicate that two thirds of the population disapprove of the president's management.
The tributary seems to disappear, unless Duque swings the wheel and gets more support.
The confusion has been taken advantage of by Gustavo Pedro, loser in the second round against Duque in 2018 who is now the favorite to be the next president, to bury the dilemma between health or tax reform.
The former mayor of Bogotá and ex-M19 guerrilla, who maintains his support for the day of protests, wrote on Twitter: "In the interests of Colombia's health, I propose to withdraw the tax reform."
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