Miguel Angel Sandoval
To Violeta Alfaro de Carpio
One of the great lessons of the months following the general elections of 2023 is to note that there are no political parties worthy of being called that way. It is true, they have the necessary 25 thousand signatures (I will not discuss how they obtained them), they hold assemblies and not always in accordance with the legality that emanates from the LEPP. Although due to the repeated ad nauseum of lack of compliance, or problems due to interpretation, the reform of the party law is pending and it would seem that it is now that a true political reform, not just a legal one, should be promoted. or legaloid.
And as something not minor, we must keep in mind that in these pseudo-parties, there is a list of around 25 acronyms, which are not parties, with their leaders, who are not, in general, politicians. They talk many things, they say many atrocities, but ideology, principles, values, programs are unknown. There are no ideas. A couple of examples may be enough to understand what is stated.
In the years following the coup-invasion-intervention and overthrow of the democratic spring and President Árbenz, a political party, the Guatemalan Labor Party -PGT- founded in those years, automatically went underground, and from there, developed a work that without exaggeration is worthy of praise. He produced in hideouts, safe houses, with different coverage, a monthly newspaper called “Truth” and a more or less semi-annual magazine, called “Our Ideas”.
Currently, can anyone attest to any magazine from any political party with enigmatic acronyms? Do the acronyms Valor, Vamos, Cabal, Elefante, Mi familia have a theoretical magazine? A monthly or bimonthly newspaper with its ideas, its programs, its theoretical references? Let’s not waste time looking because they don’t have them. Fewer training or political training schools. Or at the time, municipal training schools, or law training schools for their deputies. They are nullity.
Later, in the sixties or a little before, several guerrilla organizations, and therefore with another format than that of a political party, although promoting the functions of one of them, published monthly newspapers, magazines with theoretical flights, not so frequent, but with that function. In other words, the organizations that are vulgarly described as terrorists, communists, subversives, did act with principles, political thought, and theoretical references.
But, in addition, they always carried out, even in the most adverse conditions, I mean, under aviation and artillery bombardment, training schools and cadres. Or in the city in the midst of searches with thousands of men deployed, searching house by house, political training schools were promoted. That is why there were among his militancy, ideas, principles, political opinion. I do not eat now.
In one of those clandestine schools I had the pleasure of meeting another student, Ruth was her pseudonym, although later I learned that she was Violeta Alfaro. That is why I dedicate this note to him. For reasons of secrecy, upon arriving at that school, everyone chose a pseudonym from the twelve apostles and in the case of women, from a biblical passage, to avoid using their first name or common pseudonym. That’s why Ruth. That even then she had a level of intellectual training beyond the average in the party ranks.
Unlike the current political parties that do not produce anything, neither manifestos nor proclamations, and do not provide political education among their members, because they have no ideas to propose; Therefore, they cannot be identified by their ideas, their purposes. They are nullity. That is why the acronyms of the parties that manage to register with a lax law, and often with favors, do not have the category of political parties. They are companies or, rather, electoral micro-enterprises, tokens that are rented or sold to the highest bidder. There is important documentation on this. And CICIG made people talk by criminally accusing several businessmen who financed these electoral tokens or micro-enterprises rather than political parties.
This is why the political debacle of party imitations in the last elections constitutes the right moment to attempt a thorough political reform, with severe modifications in the LEPP and the TSE itself. Likewise, it is extremely urgent that the pseudo parties be audited by the citizens, since it is not possible that, with banners, billboards, little songs, stupid dances, they capture the vote of the generally uninformed citizens.
The Guatemalan democracy that emerged strengthened in the days after the elections and with all the maneuvers of a legal war that it had to defeat from the streets or from the communities and study or work centers, was able to observe and value that the defense of democracy and the results of the polls, had a clear, unobjectionable absence, and it is that of the political parties that were conspicuous by their absence, by their opinions and their attitudes, to the extent that they became troupes of an attempted fraud and a perverse judicial war, but also to date, we do not know their opinions. They showed that they were irrelevant, disposable.
I would say that this is the case of some deputies in Congress who do not really have the category of politicians, but rather of businessmen, of usurpers of politics, but who still try to direct the destinies of the country. I am referring to people internationally accused of being corrupt or of anything, except defenders of democracy or its principles and values. The list is long but just as an illustration I give some names that are popular. Allan, Alejos, España, Arzú, Jovel. And I stop counting.
