Neighborhood leaders, businessmen, merchants and analysts evaluate the 100 days of management of Santiago Guarderas in the Municipality of Quito

“I have just resumed the Mayor’s Office, because the laws and true justice have determined it.” Those were the first words he said Santiago Guarderas when he took back the reins of the Municipality of Quito, on September 30, 2021, after seven months of legal entanglements and political confrontations with former mayor Jorge Yunda.

This Saturday, January 8, 2022, 100 days have passed since then in which he promised to “put the house in order.”

A sector of public opinion states that, for the short time it takes to administerIt is premature to qualify if solutions to the city’s problems have been achieved. However, progress stands out on some fronts.

Others think differently. They consider that certain decisions are incomplete or that some important issues have not yet been addressed. And from the non-regularized autonomous commerce sector, it is pointed out that there are excesses in the operations of metropolitan agents.

THE UNIVERSE spoke with seven representatives of civil society, who gave their opinion on what, for them, the first 100 days of the Santiago Guarderas mayor’s office have been.

• William Basrantes, president of the Quito Neighborhood Federation

“Quito’s problems have yet to be resolvedRather, the issues of security, mobility, and economic reactivation have become more complicated. Insecurity has also grown because public spaces are abandoned. The authorities want to reduce the contagion of COVID-19, but the Trolley and the Ecovía are more than crowded. They raised our ticket and that has not been effective. In roads, the problem is not only the potholes in the roads, but even in the neighborhoods we have many streets that are not paved or that the asphalt is totally worn. The mayor has announced that he is going to illuminate the parks, this would help a lot ”.

• Carlos Loaiza, president of the Quito Chamber of Commerce

“The mayor received the Municipality in the third quarter of the year, with a budget execution of less than 50%, with a serious crisis at the institutional level. The definition of a trustworthy team was important. You have defined an agenda with four areas. That is the positive, as well as the generation of the Code of Ethics and promoting Quito Honesto, to combat corruption. We must improve in continuing to promote the reforms that are needed in emblematic projects, such as the Metro. More order needs to be put into the Historic Center, especially with regard to informal merchants. When the informal are regulated, insecurity can also be reduced ”.

Santiago Guarderas, mayor of Quito: I don’t have a magic wand to make a change in three months

• Simón Jaramillo, deputy director of the Citizen Participation platform

“When a vice mayor is responsible for assuming the Mayor’s Office by subrogation, the conditions are different than those who arrive by elections, the coupling time is longer. It is very difficult in the first months to observe a quick executive and administrative management, because generally this is to put the house in order. When surrogacy charges are granted, they generally end up as transitional authorities. What corresponds to the mayor Guarderas is precisely to achieve this orderly transition, remember that in a year we will be electing mayor. Because of the time and the way things happened, it does not lend itself to a great management, a great work. That at least some measures are managed, such as the Metro ”.

• Daniela Chacón, representative of the Quito Como Vamos collective

“There have been some interesting signs of where the mayor wants to go; for example, the recovery of the Historic Center. There has been an advance in the budget; but that’s not necessarily good, There has to be more transparency about what has been spent in these 100 days. We came with a mayor who had not executed anything, due to the political anger, and suddenly we have news that the budget execution reaches 82%. I am a little concerned about the transparency of what these resources were spent on. Another thing that is still not so clear what is the vision of the mayor. One hundred days are enough for a person, despite having already been in the Municipality and already knowing, to draw a clearer line of action ”.

• Carlos Castellanos, president of the Federation of Retail Traders and Self-Employed Workers of Pichincha (Fedecomip)

“The mayor took over the Municipality with serious complications. In these 100 days it has not been able to solve problems such as mobility, potholes, garbage collection, and the problem of the marketing system. It has not yet managed to adequately articulate these elements. On the positive side, in November and December the documentation of the merchants seeking to regularize was received, and that in January the PUCA (Unique Autonomous Trade Permit) of 2022 will be delivered. But The economic reactivation of the 54 markets, the 12 savings shopping centers, the squares and fairs is lacking. The decisions are incomplete, because to achieve a regularization and ordering of commerce a master plan is necessary; this is a debt ”.

At the end of 2021, Guarderas inherits the discredit of Yunda; while Quito is still surrounded by insecurity, unemployment, destroyed roads and an uncertain future

• José García, president of the Association of Organized Self-Employed Workers (Asotrab)

“Guarderas management is bad. What it has done with the vendors (not regularized) is something inhuman, which goes against the popular class. The right to work is being banned more strongly. Human rights have been passed over people and institutions. Beyond generating a true solution, The quality of life of the vendors who subsist on the street has worsened. In general, the management of all the mayors has been similar, but this has been terrible for the vendors who are looking to work. The roundtables have not been effective. It is not that we do not want to regularize ourselves, but that the process is very difficult and also because the places they offer us are not the most optimal ”.

• Luis Llusca, leader of the Santa Isabel neighborhood, north of Quito

“He hasn’t done anything yet. He doesn’t visit neighborhoods. There are neighborhoods that do not have sewerage, drinking water, viability. What he invested in the Quito festivities, knowing that we are with this pandemic, should have put up for the slums. There are places like Pisulí, La Roldós, where people live on dusty roads, they don’t have drinking water. These things are what the mayor has to prioritize ”. (I)