Elections in Guatemala November 2003

Guatemala: prospects for peaceful elections in jeopardy

Lone Hvass writes a comprehensive background article with personal impressions from the recent riots taking place in Guatemala - as a supplement to the interview with press man Ruben Zamora.

By Lone Hvass

22. August 2003

Prospects for fair, transparent and peaceful elections are diminishing day by day in Guatemala where general elections are slated for November 9. To date, according to data published in the national press today, not less than 13 opposition candidates for Parliament have been assaulted, leaving a death toll of nine (9), and the majority of cases have not been resolved at the time of writing. In the wake of recent turmoil in Guatemala City, certain presidential candidates have tailored their pre-electoral discourse to the tune of increased security, promising more and better prisons and pushing legislation on street gang-initiated delinquency. Two candidates from minor political parties have withdrawn their candidacies. The atmosphere is tense, and word on the street is that ‘this looks a lot like the early 1980s’, when Rios Montt committed a coup d’etat and excelled in slash- and- burn politics as counter-insurgency measure towards the armed opposition.

A month after the violent turmoil in Guatemala City, the most succinct commentary on the situation remains that of Ruben Zamora, founder-director of Guatemala’s only investigative newspaper elPeriodico. To complement his views, this article offers additional background perspectives by national observers on the state-of-affairs in the Central American Republic, beginning with a personal impression of the riots by Lone Hvass.

City under siege!

As seen through the windshield of my pick-up and later through the windows of our office kitchen on the 17^th floor, Guatemala City was temporarily under siege on Thursday, July 24. In the early morning, together with my counterpart, I had been doing a round of visits to different radio stations in the capital, inviting reporters to join a diploma course in investigative parliamentary journalism. What a dramatic coincidence!  Heading back towards the office, ‘politics by other means’ was beginning to fill out the streets in the shape of thugs armed with wooden bats charging towards two main targets: big business and communication media, according to radio commentators. Little by little, towers of smoke from burning tires filled the air in different parts of Guatemala City, and radio stations warned people not to enter certain parts of the City. We had also planned to visit the newspaper el Periodico but had to give it up as the doors were blocked by security officers with instruction to let nobody pass.

Back in the offices of Accion Ciudadana – just in time! - we watched hordes of people walking in the street. As they passed a nearby shopping centre, security guards unleashed water from fire hoses in an attempt to keep demonstrators off the premises. It worked, at least the demonstrators kept walking, albeit to create mayhem somewhere else in the city.

In the words of one local commentator, what happened on ‘Black Thursday’ could be compared to throwing a match at a petrol station. However, the intention here is not to reproduce the horror, but rather to throw light on the serious political challenges faced by Guatemalans.     

At this stage, there isn’t a shred of doubt that the official ruling party FRG (Guatemalan Republican Front) was responsible for staging the riots on Thursday, July 24th. The day before, ex-dictator Rios Montt, whose controversial, and now official, presidential candidacy is filling out air time and newspaper space, was quoted for saying that efforts to impede his registration with electoral authorities might lead his followers to become impatient and out of control. They certainly did, helped along by the ruling party, and the National Police did nothing to prevent them. The National Chief of Police has now been fired, but this is most likely a symbolic gesture.

Wanted: democratic institutions!

According to Alejandro Balsells, lawyer and professor at the University Rafael Landivar in Guatemala, democratic transition has been an uphill struggle, and much remains to be done. The formal transition from military to civilian rule saw the creation of three important institutions: the Electoral Tribunal which oversees voter registration and elections; the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman; and the Constitutional Court.

However, unlike El Salvador and Nicaragua, the transition overlooked to a great extent a key actor on the scene: the system of political parties. The upcoming elections will take place without Congress having initiated much needed reforms in relation to electoral legislation and laws relating to the administration of political parties. Instability and volatility characterize most of the parties, and regulation of funding and publicity during campaigns is weak.

With its final ruling in favour of Rios Montt’s candidacy, the credibility of the Constitutional Court has been dealt a serious blow, for two principal reasons: first, the Constitution spells out that nobody who has seized, or may seize, state power shall be allowed to run for the presidency; second, four of seven judges constituting the Court had been ‘planted’ in that capacity by Rios Montt himself.

In general, public institutions in Guatemala are discredited by the public. According to a study published in March 2003 by pollster Aragon y Asociados, Congress – which ought to be the centre of political debate and national consensus - is almost despised by the general public. By contrast, the Catholic Church is the best liked institution. One wonders why, but that’s how it is.

Wanted: democrats!

According to Minister of Foreign Affairs Edgar Gutierrez, the democratic transition in Guatemala had only the veneer of democracy, and efforts to consolidate it have unfolded in the shadow of the military apparatus, an evergreen political heavy-weight. 

It is against most odds to build a democracy without democrats, and that seems to convey the situation of Guatemalan politics in a nutshell. Political power is wielded by layers of society with strong ties to the Military and the private sector, and autonomous political parties and movements never gained real momentum, let alone ground or significant representation within state institutions. According to the Gutierrez, democrats have dispersed into academia and the NGO sector and do not represent a coherent party political option. As it stands, the Military still has a finger in every public pie, and that’s how the status quo is sustained: impunity and corruption rule.

Wanted: democracy!

Victor Ferrigno, independent analyst and speaker at an MS meeting in Guatemala City in late July, invites us to look beyond the recent riots which are just the tip of the iceberg. Poverty and exclusion in Guatemala are acute, but those conditions were not created by any particular political administration. 

Following Brazil and South Africa, Guatemala occupies third from the top on the list of countries with the deepest gaps between rich and poor. In Guatemala, the poor are overwhelmingly rural and indigenous, while the rich are primarily ladino city dwellers. Sharing national territory in parallel existence, the two groups are far from sharing any real or perceived notion of nationhood and with few exceptions the indigenous population is excluded from every aspect of public life, politics in particular. The national legal and political context has scant legitimacy among the indigenous population, many of whom are organized according to millennium traditions and legally governed by customary law. One might say that social and political living in Guatemala is a two-in-one set-up in which overlaps between two worlds usually manifest themselves as conflict.

The system of political representation in Guatemala is flawed on account of not responding to the demographic and social fabric of society. It is also inherently flawed through the weak institutional development of political parties which allows no alternation of power, only alternation of governments.  There is no government for and by the people, just government as usual.

‘May god and the international community help us!’

The above quote is from a woman shop-keeper in Guatemala City who shared her concerns in regard to the murder and mayhem already generated by the electoral process. Whether faith will help the nation falls outside the scope of these comments, but the international community – the United Nations, the Organization of American States (OAS), international cooperation agencies, and international NGOs – are heavily involved in efforts to promote 1) an increased voter turn-out, 2) the emission of a conscious, reasoned vote, and 3) observation of the elections proper. Most of these efforts include the involvement of national civil society organizations. 

The shop-keeper quoted above also said that ‘Guatemalans will sell their soul to the Devil for a few corn tortillas’. Although her remark should be taken with a pinch of salt, it has a pungent reminiscence of two serious problems affecting Guatemala: poverty and poor education. Human history is replete with examples of political wrong-doings mounted on the backs of a predominantly poor, uneducated populace, of which the Rios Montt stint is just a recent example.

Lone Hvass is long-term development worker posted with Accion Ciudadana in Guatemala City