Bogotá: What’s behind the fight between the Bogotá Council and Mayor Claudia López – Bogotá

Relations between the Bogotá Council and Mayor Claudia López once again go through a crisis. But this is not the first time that friction has arisen between the corporation and the president or members of her cabinet. Indeed, in the first year of government there were several occasions in which there were moments of tension.

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On this occasion the cause was the debate on the motion of observation to the Secretary of Health, Alejandro Gómez. And although this did not prosper, since only 15 lobbyists voted in favor – another 27 denied it and 3 abstained-, This angered López, who in several tweets used qualifiers, such as “opportunism and pettiness”, to reject criticism of the official and pointed out that the promoters were campaigning and trying to “force” Gómez’s resignation..

“Uribismo, Petrism and opportunism campaign longing for Bogotá to fail and death to obliterate us. They regret that the hospital system does not collapse, that we have overcome the second peak with everyone’s care, they despise the collective effort for life. Limitless pettiness, ”Claudia López wrote in one of five messages published last Thursday on the subject.

The qualifiers used by the president caused annoyance in the Council, particularly among those who supported summoning the secretary to a session of motion for observation.

The official had already spent five days responding to the corporation for handling the pandemic. However, his responses did not satisfy many of those who voiced their criticism.

The councilor who promoted the debate on political control was Luis Carlos Leal, who is a doctor and came to the district council with the endorsement of the Alianza Verde Party, the same as the mayor, in an agreement with the Activist movement, of which the secretary is the founder of Government, Luis Ernesto Gómez.

The motion was signed by 15 lobbyists from the banks of Colombia Humana, the Democratic Center, Bogotá for the People, one from the Democratic Pole and another from Cambio Radical and two from Alianza Verde.

“That the debate is answered with insults is not appropriate, nor does it suit the mayor. That is why this friction arises. As a Council, it bothers us that the answer to rigorous work is to treat us as petty, opportunists and uribipetristas, ”says Leal, who points out that political control is a faculty of the Council and that there is no other motivation other than to call the official’s attention ( to Alejandro Gómez) for not having responded to the substantive issues that were raised in the five-day debate.

Leal insists that the ICU bed occupancy figures reported by the Ministry of Health on the Saludata website do not correspond to reality and that there is workplace harassment and threats of dismissal of workers in the hospital network.

“What the Personería has said is true. The figures of the ICU in Saludata do not correspond to physical reality, at that time and yesterday. There is a double counting problem. They have to tell us the truth, because based on these figures they are making decisions, “says the doctor and councilor, who believes that what they are doing from the Mayor’s Office is diverting attention from the debate.

“She (the mayor) was also in our position and when she was a senator, she held fairly rigorous political control debates. Coming from doing a good political control and being an excellent congresswoman and excellent president, she has to understand that if there are some errors, the corporation is there for that, if criticism or an investigation is not allowed, then let’s close the Council ”.

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The same position is held by the former president of the Council Carlos Fernando Galán (Bogotá for the people), who assures that the Secretary’s answers did not solve their questions and doubts, and clarified that the motion of observation “is a call for attention when the Council disagrees with an action or a response of an official” and does not seek the resignation of the official, as the motion of censure would be.

“The majority of the Council was very surprised by the Secretary’s responses, who did not answer what was asked of him. He did a short little thing, like a management report. He reacted and came back and took the floor at the end and dedicated himself to answering specific questions in order to be able to say that he answered, but many of the underlying things remained unanswered, “he says.

With figures from Saludata of January 15, Galán cites that he has failed on several issues. For example, the contact tracing of a person infected was not 10 people but 1.78 and more than 65 percent of cases were diagnosed when 6 days after the onset of symptoms had passed.

For all this, the former mayoral candidate assures that He was surprised by the tweets of the mayor and that behind that reaction there is a deep concern of the president about the fall in the polls and for the “mistakes that have been made” and the untimely decisions taken in the second peak of the pandemic.

“She is distressed by this situation, they know that there have been problems and they are aware of the very serious security situation. All that has hit her, ”says Galán, who reiterates that decisions such as quarantines in the second peak of contagion were taken at the beginning of January, when the number of infected and most indicators began to show a downward trend.

Galán also points out that the mayor has already shown them that “she does not like control.” “Since she came to the government, when they control her it is, she says it is because of opportunism, because of pettiness. And when she (as a senator) did it, it was out of patriotism and height. He has to understand that in democracy we have to have control and accept and respect it, because that is the legitimate exercise of democracy and balance ”.

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Carlos Carrillo (Polo Democrático), another of the summons of the Secretary of Health and of those who voted in favor of the observation motion, identifies with Galán in the sense that the mayor “does not tolerate criticism” and that the motion to This observation was a wake-up call to the official for not having resolved the underlying concerns raised during the political control debate.

“I am aware of the loss of prestige of the Council, but some of us exercise our obligation to make political control of the mayor and we were in a very serious matter, led by Luis Carlos Leal, who is neither pretrista, nor Uribista, nor opportunists, nor petty, but a doctor who came to the Council campaigning with doctors and is a respectable person and has a single purpose, which is to ensure the well-being of doctors and that lives are saved, which is the only thing that should matter to us now.

Carrillo states that He is still awaiting responses to his complaint that between June and September of last year, 215 people died while waiting for an ICU. “I cannot assure you that they died waiting for the ICU, what I can assure you is that 215 people, between June and September, were granted their right to receive an ICU. What is the answer to that, ‘it hasn’t appeared yet ”, insists Carrillo.

Regarding this new friction between Mayor Claudia López and the Council, the president of the district corporation, María Fernanda Rojas, was conciliatory and called for “tranquility” and not to “break the bridges” that have been built between the Administration and the Council.

“In this you should not hurt so much with words and language. Just as we are telling people to be careful, put on a mask, wash your hands, politicians should be careful not to fall so much into that belligerence of words, because that breaks bridges and because, finally, now what people want to know is where are we going, and the task of the Council and the Mayor’s Office is to trace that north and how we are going to reactivate ourselves ”, he says.

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The president of the district council also said that in democracy the difference and political discussion is understandable and necessary. “We cannot expect politicians to not have political debates, all debates in the Council are political.”

Rojas also considers as “unnecessary the words” used by the mayor in her tweets, but said it was a reaction to the motion of observation of the “coequipero” of the president in the handling of the worst health crisis that the city has had and the world in the last 100 years.

“Alejandro Gómez has been very important in managing the crisis and the mayor recognizes in him his bastion so that the city has been able to move forward. I imagine that it hurts and affects her, but it seems unnecessary for us to reach that level of aggression in language, “adds the councilor, who also points out the motion for observation to the Secretary of Health as” unfair “and without reason.

But Alejandro Gómez is not the first member of Claudia López’s cabinet to have an observation motion debate held in the Council and, as some benches are moving, he will not be the last.

In that situation it was already Nicolás Estupiñán, the Secretary of Mobility, and there has been talk that the next could be the Secretary of Security, Hugo Acero. In fact, last year a motion of censure promoted by Colombia Humana against the official failed.

It should also be remembered that the relationship between the Mayor’s Office and the Council has already had several moments of tension. One was in the discussion of the development plan, following a tweet in which the president questioned an alleged “undue lobbying” and “money under the table of private interests”; another when the Mayor’s Office withdrew the “Marshall Plan” project and the Secretary of the Government blamed the Council for procedural defects.

Another was presented at the beginning of the discussion of the debt quota project. At that time, the Radical Change bench challenged one of the speakers and co-author in the lawsuit against the metro. This ended up sinking the project into ordinary sessions.

And another tense moment was when Officials of the Government Secretariat took photos and videos of the empty enclosure at noon, during a blended session, which were disseminated through social networks, which was described by various lobbyists as a “media show” by Luis Ernesto Gómez.

In the Enrique Peñalosa Administration, a sector of the then Council tried unsuccessfully – not even discussed – an observation motion against the Secretary of Mobility Juan Pablo Bocarejo.

The only time this appeal has been voted against a District official was in the first mayor’s office of Antanas Mockus, when the district council approved the motion of observation against Efraín Alberto Becerra Gómez, then Secretary of Transit.

GUILLERMO REINOSO RODRÍGUEZ
Bogota Editor
@ guire24