Recently the president of Colombia named Iván Duque wanted to increase taxes in Columbia to be sure of financial stability in the county. The tax reform was originally targeted to raise about 6.3 billion dollars, eliminate deductions and exemptions, expand taxes on individuals and businesses, and apply sales tax to more products.
This angered the Colombians and caused many to protest on the streets of their cities as a reaction to the tax increases. People were complaining, they were not happy with the way the country was being run and this was their last straw.
The proposal would have been extremely difficult on the lower and middle-class citizens of Columbia. Plus with the pandemic it has caused increased economic hardship and the pandemic has made it even harder for citizens to earn money to pay off the taxes. Some Colombians said that they were already struggling to feed their families and the tax increase will make it almost impossible to get what they need to survive.
Due to this the Colombian citizens started protesting. They were demanding for the president to withdraw the tax reform. The police were mad and annoyed about the protesting so they were led to many deaths of innocent people. On May 12th it was confirmed that 42 people were killed including one of them being a ninth grader, thousands were injured and detained due to the police, and 16 of them experienced some type of sexual assault. Some of these victims were young people as well and were even getting attacked and many lost an eye from the violence.
The protests began at the end of April. The protests and deaths started getting too far so Iván Duque Márquez, president of Columbia finally decided to withdraw the tax proposal to not cause any more harm. Even after the tax proposal was gone the protests still continued. The government took too much time to take away the tax proposal which kept Colombians on the streets protesting. It wasn’t just the taxes that upset them though they didn’t like the way the government had been controlling the country for the past couple years.
As of right now the government is not as strong in this county. They have no exact plan on how to make healthcare better and easier. Citizens are commanding the government to do their job.This has been the largest sweep through Colombia in decades and caused many damages to the country.