Petro and “another fine mess”

On 18 December Gustavo Petro will nationalize – or rather “districtalize” – the collection of Bogotá´s rubbish, passing this vital amenity to the EAAB, the publicly run water company.

Yet as I write, with less than three weeks to go until this new regime begins, there is huge uncertainty about how an apparently disorganized and unprepared public sector will take over from the – not perfect, but functioning – private sector.

We have received precious little word about the EAAB´s strategy for the 24-hour-600-route-7,700-tonne pick-up service. And, por el amor de Dios, as impossible as it seems to believe, the most basic of infrastructure – the dustcarts themselves – are yet to be purchased.

Does Petro really expect us to believe the work of the four current service providers – with more than a decade of “on the job” experience – can be handed overnight, with no obvious preparation or planning, to an organization whose seemingly unique qualification for the role is that they are not privately owned?

Sure, the water company might get the hang of disposing of the plastic bags that line our streets, but how can we have confidence in the system when the mayor has failed to explain how it will work, how much it will cost us, and when and from where on earth he will get the vehicles on whose operation everything is dependent?

But it gets worse still.

It could well end up that the government´s legal-bods pull the plug on this bizarre experiment before it can even get started.  Lawyers are investigating whether the proposals violate the competition laws and the anti-monopolies principle.

The lack of detail on the plan has left the government scratching its head as to the extent to which the activities will be delivered by just the one organization – ie the EAAB – and how much of the service will, for example, be sub-contracted, perhaps back to some of the private companies.

To attempt to get to the bottom of this, the Santos Government on 21 November, sent in an investigative team from the office of superintendence . A normal, sensible decision, you might think.

Well, Petro reacted with fury and ire, blocking the government´s entry, and declaring war on the state.

“Petro the indignado” took to the streets with megaphone in hand to attack a government, who, according to him were defending the interests of a “paramilitary mafia”.

He called on “the people” to rush to the EAAB´s offices, to join him in the barricade. Some hundreds of trade unionists and Petro sympathizers flocked to the mayor´s side.

You could almost hear the cries of down with the “golpistas” off their “imperialista” heads.

The EAAB had been transformed into the front line of a “descalzonzado” resistance. Petro and his band of plucky insurgents stood firm and proud against the might of an interfering government; nothing less than the sovereignty of the mayoralty was under threat, we were warned.

Petro the heroic, Petro the Savior, later tweeted of his pride in defending “public patrimony”.

Thanks be to Gustavo the Great, Bogotá´s Eva Peron.

To neutral observers it might look as though Petro is purposely entering into a fight to disguise, or to find excuse for, the imminent disaster about to hit Bogotá.

To others it will also appear strange that Petro has taken on this struggle in the first place. After all, just 17% of those polled expressed dissatisfaction with the waste disposal service they receive, and as Héctor Riveros of La Silla Vacía has noted, “there are no tests of public opinion that show refuse among the list of priorities”.

Frankly, the average Bogotano could not give a tinker´s cuss whether his garbage is picked up by the state or a private company. Evidently what matters is that the city is clean.

So if the system aint broke, why is Petro trying to fix it? Even if the new system does kick into life on 18 December, even if there are improvements made to the service, they will essentially be small in scale when compared to the more pressing problems facing the capital.

For the 70% of people who did not vote for Petro, this is desperate stuff.  Bogotá demands a mayor who is focused 100% on the necessary and urgent improvements to her creaking infrastructure.

We need decisions and investment in education, and transport, and the release of land to develop the free housing the government has promised, but claims is being road-blocked by the Mayor´s Office.

Tragic then that Bogotá has a leader who struggles to escape the impression that he, as Former Mayor Jaime Castro claims, “governs by rhetoric”, not by outcomes.

Action, not words and phony wars is what Bogotá yearns for. The Athens of Latin America deserves better than decay and decline – and unmanaged decline, at that.

This article was written for The City Paper.