By Fernando Martínez Escobar.
The pre-candidate for mayor of Asunción for the PLRA and the alliance “Together for Asunción” Eduardo Nakayama talks about his lines of action as mayor of the city, the mechanism he and his party used to avoid getting caught up in the historical dispute between Llanismo and Efraimismo, and thus achieve a consensus candidacy. In addition, he affirms that they are open to reaching agreements with other sectors of the opposition.
What are your main proposals for Asunción?
There are two ways to answer this question, one is to talk about what people take as most palpable, which are the public works; and another that I think is more appropriate to the programmatic effects that are the lines of action. I’m going to start with the lines of action and then I’m going to reel off.
First, I think it is important to implement innovation, from the point of view of administrative efficiency, to shorten processes that make the bureaucracy generate corruption. The more steps required for the citizen, the greater the possibility that the “solutions” are sold by managers who are within the Municipality, or even outside. They play the famous “good guard” and “bad guard” and they tell you that something “can’t be done” and then they tell you “Yes it can”, but “in this way”.
So, the first thing we have to do is focus on innovation. Asunción has a large number of private works under construction that are blocked due to lack of approval in municipal authorities, because priority is given to large projects such as buildings, shopping malls and others, which come out as if by “magic art”, very quickly. When it comes to a simple renovation of a single-family home, the municipality blocks the work for years. This can be improved with a technological innovation that allows the digitization of plans, sending in PDF, automatic approval for affidavit, etc., especially when it comes to single-family homes. This can also be applied to vehicle patents and others.
I mention these points because it seems important to me that we match the administration with the tax collection. The municipality cannot do much if it does not collect, and that collection also occurs when one grants the patent, the authorization, etc. What this type of bureaucracy and intermediation do is leave the municipality with less resources.
Just yesterday I read Maturana saying that he does not like the word opposition, he would rather use the word collaboration. The concept seemed very interesting to me, because one can be in one village today and tomorrow in another, but when we are in government, whether municipal or national or departmental, rather than opposition and officialism, what should be sought is how to stretch the car all together and put some points of common interest, such as medium and long-term government plans.
Secondly, it is very important to put citizen protection as a line of action, from the point of view of accessibility, inclusion, lighting of spaces, pedestrian and cyclist prioritization and protection over cars. In the last 50 years the city has become unfriendly for pedestrians and cyclists. We have to begin to see that the automobile is, as many urbanites say, the “cigarette of the future.” We have to start prioritizing citizen-oriented projects, starting with the microcenter and other parts of the waterfront, through projects that are possible to carry out, that do not require many resources through a management plan.
In addition, I also spoke before about the issue of protection, because many times one believes that protection only comes from the hand of police security, with weapons and guards. That doesn’t have to be that way. A public space occupied by citizens is freed from darkness, crime and other things. This was applied at the time by Jaime Lerner in Curitiba, with great success, even creating the famous “Rúa 24 hours”, which works wonderfully until today in the Batel area. We can draw on certain regional and world teachings to apply.
Finally, the third line of action is the eradication of corruption. I am not saying that it is 100% possible to eliminate corruption, but we have to set ourselves that goal and that will be possible if we make transparent processes so that citizens can see what is being done. We have to overcome the secrecy in the Municipality, maintained through administrative backlog, which requires, for example, that you buy sealed paper, stamps at the window, that you go to 5 offices before they can attend to your claims. We also have to eradicate this excessive bureaucracy so that it redounds to the benefit of the citizen and the municipality.
How do you get along with Llanismo and Efraimismo? Are they accompanying you in this electoral process?
We know that the problem between Llanismo and Efraimismo is practically irreconcilable. We understood perfectly that getting into that game would have cost us in advance to lose any aspiration to recover the capital city administration. Therefore, we made the smartest decision demanded by the leadership in Asunción. We knew that the problem could not be solved, such as a death that cannot be solved, but we have decided to overcome the matter, as the death of a close relative can be overcome. We put ourselves above the problem to build with the leadership a joint project that can bring different parties together.
We set three objectives with the capital leadership: to form and register an alliance in Asunción, so that we can eventually bring together other opposition forces, which was fulfilled with list 5, in the “Together for Asunción” alliance. In this case, I am not going to go for the Liberal Party as part of party list 2, instead I am going to go as a candidate for mayor for the Alliance “Together for Asunción.” That first objective was achieved.
The second objective, to avoid internal quarrels, was to form a consensus list for the party’s candidates for councilors of Asunción; It was not an easy task, this required many conversations and resignations. We finally got a single list of candidates, which are part of party list two. The internal one that we are going to have in June, by the system of unblocking the lists, will simply serve to order the number that the candidates will have, because the Liberal Party, statutorily, is the only party that has a percentage of women who have to be part of the list. In that sense, we have many new figures, highly respected women who are on the party’s council list.
The third and last objective was to agree on a single candidacy for the mayor. This took longer, because Guillermo Cortés and I were there. Those conversations took place between October and December. There we began to do something atypical, trying to show that, in Asunción, contrary to what happened at the national level with historical disputes, it was possible to work in harmony. So, we did an unprecedented campaign, where together we went to do social services, we went to visit, for example, before Christmas, the children admitted to the Hospital de Barrio Obrero, that is, we did actions to demonstrate and project what we were doing for unity and I think that paid off and finally, although it was difficult, we achieved unity in the month of March. Guillermo Cortés presented his resignation and I was left as the consensus candidate of the party and of the alliance “Together for Asunción.”
What are the conversations with the other sectors of the opposition? With whom have you already been able to talk about a possible alliance and what would be the alliance mechanism?
I spoke with all sectors. I think there is a very good prospect for reaching agreements. At this moment what each one wants is to grow their candidacy a little, to see how far one can go. I think there is awareness within the opposition that the ideal is to join forces to get there. Anyway, we work under different scenarios. The ideal is union; and the catastrophic, or worst-case scenario, as we call it in the insurance sector, is that such an alliance cannot take place. Either way, we must seek victory on all stages. We are working in that sense, because it has already happened that at some point somebody preferred to run on their own and, willingly or not, managed to divide the votes by being functional to the Colorado Party. So that is the least desired scenario, but it is a possible scenario and we have to try to work together. I personally stated, on more than one occasion, that we must all accompany the candidate who has the best chances. I think that this has to be the sine qua none of everything.
We haven’t talked about the mechanism yet. The logical thing would be to carry out a survey at the city level, which logically can also reflect the true electoral map, because more mistakes can be made if we do a sampling without much science behind it. In Asunción we have six districts and each one has an electoral weight; in turn, in each district we have neighborhoods and each neighborhood has a different weight. Therefore, we have to try to make the representativeness of that poll reflect the will of the people to accompany this or that candidate.
Finally, is it possible to project a political career at the national level after having been mayor of Asunción? Above all, seeing that in general the ex-mayors of the capital did not have a great national projection.
I believe that it is possible, although the statistics are lapidary. The key is in administration, efficiency and innovation, making the city work a little better, collect a little more, generate new sources of revenue and prioritize issues that have historically remained in the background, such as the quality of life of people in vulnerable situations living in Los Bañados. What was already been spent on assistance to these people could have been used to find definitive solutions to their problems, such as providing them with decent housing, properties that are in their names, with proper property titles, so that the children do not have to be exposed to totally unsanitary and inhumane living conditions. To achieve these solutions, it is not possible for the municipality to work alone, we have to be very clear in relation to that. Dr. Eusebio Ayala always said that you do not have to promise what you will not be able to fulfill, but I believe that the municipality has a political commitment that it has to lead to seek those definitive solutions.
In recent weeks, I have traveled both the North and South Bañados, the low Chacarita area, the Cabildo lowlands and the Cateura area. People ask for answers, because they literally live in the middle of the garbage, sewage, suffering from the overflows of the Moroti and Ferreira streams that drain into the Paraguay River on flat land and that reach all the houses affecting hundreds of families. We have to look for definitive solutions. It can be done. There are interesting infrastructure projects to achieve that. There are laws that would allow several of these lands to be recovered. It is estimated that some 2000 hectares could be recovered when the southern waterfront ends. In total, along the entire coastal strip, some 700 hectares are habitable. So, at least part of these lands should be used for social investment – another part for investments – to provide titles to the inhabitants and give them flexible and real financing plans at fiscal prices. If we think, for example, twenty million guaranies in twenty years, each family would need to pay eighty thousand guaranies per month, something absolutely possible to pay at a frozen price, so that they become aware that the lot is theirs, that they are paying it with dignity and that with that title they can go to a cooperative and look for loans. It will be a huge achievement for these new owners to be able to say “I want to improve my house, have a modern bathroom” and ask for financing, because many of these compatriots have latrines or are directly using the outdoors as a toilet.
Finally, it is important for me to say that in this city construction we all need to be together, our alliance is called “Together for Asunción”, it is not exclusive, it also includes the Colorados, everyone.
Just yesterday I read Maturana saying that he does not like the word opposition, if not the word collaboration. The concept seemed very interesting to me, because one can be in one village today and tomorrow in another, but when we are in government, whether municipal or national or departmental, rather than opposition and officialism, what should be sought is how to stretch the car all together and put some points of common interest, such as medium and long-term government plans. I am sure that with all the parties, sectors and ideologies there are points in common. I think we agree that public transport is a disaster and that we have to find alternative ways to improve; We agree to lift thousands of Paraguayans and Asuncenos out of poverty, to move towards a more friendly and accessible city. We have to revitalize the historic center of Asunción, to give it life, so that it becomes once again a meeting point for citizens and all Paraguayans. Asunción is the capital of the Republic and all the inhabitants of this country, including the foreigners who come to visit, want to have a fairly decent and beautiful historic center.
My message is that everyone, without exclusion, must do something so that Asunción is transformed in the next 20 or 30 years.