Making rules or laws is a tough thing. Because sometimes one size may fit all. Same can be said about concessions. Colombia Congress got to experience this first-hand on Tuesday. In first such move in any parliament in the world, lawmakers were given permission to bring their pets to work. While most expected lawmakers to bring cute little bundles of joy in form of their cats or dogs, one of the senator stole the scene with his stallion.
Alirio Barrera came to work on a horse.
“My pet is my horse,” he said.
“If the law is for one, let it be for all.”
He not only brought horse to Colombian parliament but he rode through the capital Bogota before steering his steed into the halls of Congress, to make a statement about the importance of horses for the Colombian countryside.
“It is a tribute to the farmers, to the men and women, to the herdsmen who live with horses. To all those people who work in the fields,” he told AFP, holding his horse — named Pasaporte — by the bridle.
The new policy of allowing pets in parliament was announced by Senate President Roy Barreras last week. He made the announcement with his dog in his lap This makes the Colombian Congress “the first in the world to be pet-friendly,” he said.
Although Alirio Barrera caught many an eyeball as he arrived astride his horse, some of his colleagues were not too happy. His horsback ride rubbed some of them in a wrong way.
Senator Andrea Padilla criticized what she called “an immature attitude with which he wanted to ridicule a good decision.”
“It is not the same thing to take a dog to the office as a horse,” she said. “A horse suffers on the asphalt, on the sidewalk, it suffers on these waxed floors.”
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