Published On: Mon, Jan 21st, 2013

Petro showing “mental confusion”: Polo Democrats´ Suarez

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A key member the Polo Democratic Alternative Party (PDA) moved to further distance the party from Bogota’s controversial mayor Gustavo Petro and his administration on Sunday in an interview with El Espectador.

Aurelio Suarez, a former Bogotá mayoral candidate for the party who stood against Petro in 2011, said a prominent reason for the setbacks the Petro administration has suffered in its first year in office are due to the “mental confusion” of the mayor. He claimed that Petro “doesn’t know what he wants and what he can do in the existing institutional framework to advance programmes”.

Suarez emphasised that the Petro administration had an “incredible capacity to do unreasonable things” and that fundamental elements of the administration “cannot be categorised as of the left”. He cited the administration’s support for public-private partnerships as evidence of this, as well as criticising the introduction of a number of new taxes in the city since Petro came to power in 2011.

Suarez’s comments reveal a fear of the PDA that as a party of the Left they risk being associated with the incompetence and controversy that surrounds the Petro regime. Indeed, they point to a broader problem that the Left faces in Colombia in that parties pitching for a more moderate position are often associated in with the array of extreme elements that exist in the country. Petro himself used to belong to the PDA but left under a cloud when the party decided – in certain measure – to stick by the then disgraced Bogotá mayor, Samuel Moreno. Petro has since set up his own party, the Progressives, but as Suarez admitted in the interview, sections of the society still link Petro back to the PDA.

The PDA face a fight for survival at the congressional elections next year. Although their senate list leader is the popular Jorge Enrique Robledo, there is a real possibility that the party will not reach the appropriate percentage of the national vote to secure seats in the parliament. Clara López, recently confirmed as the party´s presidential candidate in 2014, has a job to do to position the PDA in a packed field, and to present a reasonable and voting winning face of the left. Any association with the hugely unpopular Petro must be avoided at all costs.

With old friends like these….

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