Three protests have exerted pressure on the government, which has ended up giving in to the demands. According to experts, this is due to two main factors: the lack of effective communication, which prevents ensuring citizen support for the benefits of the regulations imposed, and the perception among the dissatisfied that, through protests, it is possible to avoid prolonged negotiations.
The garbage classification, which would take effect on February 11, was rejected by waste collection; The mandatory insurance, which should acquire every citizen, was a source of protests, mainly of motorists; and the protest of health workers to demand a salary increase were pressures for the government to yield to the demands.
Lack of communication
The political scientist and former coordinator of the Presidential Commission for Dialogue, Miguel Ángel Balcárcel, affirms that one of the problems is that, although there was a dialogue in some issues, such as the classification of waste and mandatory insurance, the interested parties were not included, the communication was not effective by the Government and, consequently, the rest of the population did not know the decisions that were made.
“In the case of waste collection there was no consensus and the classifiers who work in the garbage dump were not taken into account. Obviously, their way of making a living was affected, which they have already established for years. Those dimensions could not be seen,” he said.
With the insurance, according to Balcárcel, they had to implement them gradually and dialogue with motorists and motor drivers.
“With the health, I understand that they had had a series of meetings. So what happened there? Let’s say that, as our union movement is accustomed for many years, protests are the way to press so that everything becomes easy and the bureaucracy is avoided,” he explained.
“The Government does not expect what type of reactions will have before their decisions, especially in a context in which it is sufficiently clear that there is interest to destabilize this management,” he added.
Failure
For political analyst Álvaro Pop, the failure of government negotiations with protesters only demonstrates the need to have a better response capacity from several instances, and a better articulated, more communicated and more organized cabinet.
“The health protest had to do with the governorate, with the Secretariat of Strategic Analysis, with health, obviously, and with finance. It is an issue that must be part of a permanent analysis of unforeseen situations and more articulated attention from the cabinet,” he said.
Pop recommends installing a permanent crisis table that can react immediately to mobilizations and that has early alerts on intentions of instability.
“It is important in a country like Guatemala, because it has kept under its carpet, and hidden in the closet, a lot of crisis that will come out at any time,” he said.
He added: “Then, we have crisis of governance, economic crises, crisis in land management, in the agrarian issue. Only in the agrarian we have more than 200 types of conflict.”
The analyst considers that President Bernardo Arévalo and his cabinet are always defensive, and that has cost them to address structural issues more thought.
Ricardo Burero, an independent political scientist, says that the Government has suffered unnecessary wear and tear since it was tried to promote waste classification, due to lack of socialization with the population, which generated opportunities for the opposition to generate misinformation.
“Given the misinformation, we saw a manifestation where there was, almost forced, generate dialogue tables, discussion tables, but already with a high wear of the government, and that is not sustainable,” he said.
“There is a perception of demonstration for negotiation, but the government does not respond first with the negotiation to avoid the demonstration,” he said.
Answer
The Executive was questioned about the way in which he has managed the protests, and by the Secretariat of Social Communication of the Presidency it was indicated that “it is not the first time that, in a government, these types of measures are taken.”
“This government has managed to attend to the different sectors through dialogue processes. Dialogues serve precisely to listen, understand and reach agreements. That has been the path of this government since the first day, the path of dialogue,” they said.
“We will continue listening to those who legitimately express their needs and demands, and we will ensure respect for the right of demonstration, as well as free locomotion,” they said.