Election News in Guatemala

Danilo Valladares wrote Elections Unlikely to Bring Change to Guatemala last week for IPS. In it, Danilo interviews a number of analysts in Guatemala that claim that significant change will not come to Guatemala's political system unless a constituent assembly is convened and the constitution is rewritten.

I'm not convinced that rewriting the constitution will seriously transform the country. The same five percent of the population that controls eighty percent of the country's land, along with others that have fought to keep the system weak, would be heavily involved in manipulating any new constitution to their advantage. Change, if it does come, is more likely to be incremental with uneven developments across the entire political scene. There's also the terrible precedent by the May 1999 attempt to reform the constitution.

In other election news, since I last made fun of the paltry fines that political parties pay for violation that country's electoral laws, the TSE has begun fining parties for each infraction. Therefore, the fines are beginning to add up - CREO (~$3,000), LIDER (~$1,000), and the UP $500,

 
The Integration Movement has taken to putting up its own signs criticizing the country's politicos and government officials are not that happy. Suger (CREO), Estrada (UCN), and VP Estrada are all worried about the insults and how they might not be healthy for Guatemalan democracy.

The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas has an interview with Héctor Cordero on Threats, bribes and other challenges of reporting on Guatemala's elections. Cordero is a correspondent with Guatevisión TV in Quiché.

Here's Cordero's response to a question about what happens to reporters while covering the country's election.

Expulsions from assemblies when it does not suit the politicians for it to be known how they are organizing the different lists of people participating in the elections. For example, 15 days ago we were kicked out of the UNE party headquarters by two bodyguards of a deputy on the grounds that the meeting was private, clashes with security forces of candidates for local congress members and mayors, all basically because the official election campaign has not begun but all parties are already campaigning throughout Quiché.

The money being spent now is tremendous, at the end of a press conference several candidates -- especially for congress -- started handing out money. They said it was to cover the journalists' expenses, and a lot of journalists accept it because they do not understand that it is a commitment so that later on if these politicians make a mistake the journalist won't publish anything. It is very difficult to deal with this. Thank God I count on the unconditional support of Noticiero Guatevisión, and this means they don't offer me money because they know I will publish it.

It is important to note that much of the responsibility of receiving money in exchange for favors in the mass media lies with the media outlets, or at least the large ones,because the salaries are very low and that makes many journalists accept bribes. This is no excuse, but politicians take advantage of this, because if an event is in faraway places, they offer transportation or fuel, plus food, plus a supplementary payment. And because the election season is just starting, it is important to note that not all journalists have this kind of attitude to accept money.

And Cordero has some troubling comments on how candidates get on the ballot.

The positions (on the ballot) for congress members and mayors have converted into a big business. In Quiché, the top place on the ballot for a congress member if the party is well-represented costs up to 2 million Quetzales (roughly U.S. $250,000), which means these spots go to businessmen or ex-Congress members who have gotten rich with government money.

Of course, the consequences are disastrous, because people are elected who perhaps are successful at a particular business but don't know anything about the Republic's Congress. There have been cases of persons who barely know how to read and write and eventually they become merchants of the law, charging to approve a law, and forgetting the promises they made during the election campaign.

In the end, I believe this will all collapse if there are not profound changes made to the electoral law and political parties, because the people who are real community leaders generally don't participate in politics because the costs are too high.

There is talk of financing by drug trafficking in the election campaigns, however as it is never said where the funding is coming from, we will never know who is doing this. But generally journalists don't touch this because it is highly sensitive and their families run a lot of risk.

All troubling indeed

Finally, the left's ANN, URNG, and several social groups will participate as the Frente Amplio (or Broad Front) in this year's elections.

The Frente's objective is to be a political and social instrument of dialogue and partnership in order to construct a pluricultural, multiethnic, and multilingual nation with social justice and gender equality with economic development oriented towards the common good, in defense of land and cultural property.

Running separate candidates in 2007, the ANN and URNG won less than 3% of the presidential vote. In the congressional elections, the URNG won 2 seats with 3.27% of the national vote while the ANN did not win any.