“The alliance has to be with the people in the streets, take the politics out of the parties and do it with the people.” Interview with Johanna Ortega
By Marcos Pérez Talia.
The pre-candidate for mayor of Asunción, Johanna Ortega Ghiringhelli, reflects in this interview on her main campaign axes, the possibilities of alliances in the opposition and the risks that the municipal government would eventually imply.
If you reach the City Hall of the capital, what would your main proposals be?
The first line of action has to do with health, which has had a terrible impact on the citizens. I am convinced that all the problems of the people of Asunción have to be the problems of the city’s mayor. For example, we need to modernize and strengthen the Municipal Polyclinic so that it can offer a quality service, even better than that of the private sector. It is necessary to promote what is related to primary health care, and for that there is a network of municipal dispensaries that is completely abandoned and that we want to reactivate. In short, we want to intervene with a line of public health policy that is efficient, modern and that responds to the health of the citizens, that is the most urgent thing because it is what people ask the most.
Our second line of action has to do with economic reactivation. We are still working with the economic team to refine a proposal that has to do with generating guarantees from the funds that the municipality receives in the area of commercial patents. The municipality is financed in part by commercial patents paid by micro, small and medium enterprises in Asunción. We believe that the municipality has to, on the one hand, protect the workers and jobs that these micro, small and medium-sized enterprises generate in the city and, on the other hand, give guarantees that we can generate sustainability for those ventures that are here today.
The third line of action has to do with security, which should not only be understood as a police issue, but also with the comprehensive protection of citizens when they go out on the streets, when they use public spaces, here we include the current issues with sidewalks and potholes, also including cases of violence against women in public spaces, which we cannot continue to allow.
And the fourth thing, which seems like an issue that is not on the municipal agenda today, is climate change, which we understand is transversal to everything. In order to discuss cities, we have to think about the habitability of these cities. Asunción is at tremendous risk due to the high temperatures and floods. All the time we complain that it is hotter and there are a lot of related infrastructure issues, that is, how we build the streets, how we think about the openings of our public spaces, everything that has to do with municipal spaces. The habitability is going to be tremendously affected by the high temperatures and there not only infrastructure enters, but also means of transport, mobility, etc.
We are paving the streets without generating any type of infrastructure. We only asphalt, asphalt and asphalt, and that is much less permeable than cobblestones or other types of solutions that could be given for traffic in the city. They also have to be accompanied by drainage, sewerage and other services that the municipality does not provide today and that obviously have to work with the central government. But, in essence, this is what we all suffer. Waste management is closely related to climate change, and we have to think about this also in terms of education and prevention of unnecessary waste generation.
Finally, there is the issue of mobility, which cannot only be thought of in terms of vehicles, or public transport. We have to try to be very innovative and present a proposal that is truly modern, that thinks of that city of the future that we want, and continues to breathe fresh air. We want Asunción to continue to have the number of trees it has and to be a green city. In terms of mobility, there are enough great cities around the world to look at what they are doing and what they are thinking about to provide mobility responses and combat climate change at the same time.
Considering the need for alliance with the opposition, does it not seem difficult to you that there are several opposing offers? Even progressivism has two candidates.
First of all, I want to value and insist on the need for more progressive people to act in politics and dare to run for office and be in public power to transform. I think it’s a great thing, considering that for a long time we were a minority at some point.
Today we see even in the traditional parties how there are many more young people involved in politics, and that seems to me to be a brutal advance for the democratic transformation that this country needs. Of course, this necessarily brings us to the situation that there are many candidates. Now, the “Alianza Asunción para Todos y Todos” is already the result of a great effort to unify progressive candidates. We now have six parties and three movements within the alliance that support a single candidacy for mayor, which is mine, and that have a consensual and agreed list of councilors.
I believe that the great alliances have to be of programs, they do not have to be only arithmetic alliances. Politics does not work like that and above all, the alliance has to be with the people in the streets, take politics out of the parties and do it with the people. I see a commitment from all of us to sit down at a dialogue table, and that’s where we are going.
Can you get out of the public management in Asunción without having affected one’s reputation? Considering previous experiences such as that of Mario Ferreiro
It is true that the latest experiences lead us to have that pessimism very present and to think that this space is a huge monster that ends the political career of all the people who arrive there. But it is also true that there were successful governments at the municipal level and, even, the first municipal government is a government that had its program, called “Back to Believing”, and that when the municipal government ended it gave another little book to the people of Asunción that It said “Kept Promises.” There it was clearly broken down that each proposal that was given to you in the booklet “Back to Believing” was answered in the “Kept Promises”.
Sure, 30 years have passed, there are many changes. We believe that democracy also, at the local and national levels, is at the right time to make that leap and to think that it is possible to transform. I would be lying to you if I told you that only one person can do it. There has to be a team, that’s why I talk a lot about alliances with the people and families that live in Asunción. There has to be citizen empowerment, what we want for the city has to be installed in the public debate and we will not achieve that when we reach the municipal administration, I will not achieve that when I become mayor; We are going to achieve that now, to get politics out of the parties and to the people.
I am a person who has been in a party for 17 years, since I was 16, and I know perfectly well that there is not the only space where politics has to be done, I know perfectly that politics has to be done in the streets, with the people , in the neighborhoods, in their homes, everywhere; that each table of each family, have the debate of what model of city we want and support each other.
Of course people want solutions, I am very aware of that, people helped me get here so that I can do my work and they will want solutions and it is good that it be so, but it is also important that people are empowered by the city model that they want and that we discuss and debate together: What do we want Asunción to be, what do we dream about? This will depend a lot on people seriously supporting a municipal government and not allowing people who historically occupied spaces in the Municipal Board, within the Municipality or even outside and who are in politics, to sabotage our project of a different city because it is possible to do it.
I believe that the alliances have to be made with and for programs, not only arithmetic alliances. Politics doesn’t work like that and above all, the alliance has to be with the people in the streets, take the politics out of the parties and work with the people. And in that sense, it seems to me that we are already trying to move the candidates in this direction, in this case the opposition. We will continue to do so and I see a commitment from all of us, to sit down at a dialogue table, this is where we are heading.
Asunción has all the potential to be a tourist destination city, to promote its ecological tourism, because we are a super green city, it has a lot of potential to have other forms of mobility other than the traditional ones, it has everything to improve. It is true, maybe some resources are lacking, we need to do reengineering and an institutional reform and of course we are committed to doing it, but with the people who live in Asunción. I know that if we start talking about it during the campaign, we will arrive with that very clear model. The fundamental thing is to have a program agreed with the citizens. I do not come to do exclusionary politics, I am not going to exclude anyone from any party, anyone who does not have a party, or anyone who has not been in politics before. I want to work with the people who are willing to work for this city.