Miguel Angel Sandoval
If one is moderately optimistic, or misinformed, which is the same thing in the end, one could be satisfied, even happy, with the existence of 29 parties. If they are 25 or 35, it doesn’t matter. That demonstrates the strength of democracy, or the people’s commitment to democracy, or the idea we have of democracy. Although all this is no more than a declaration of intent made by an optimistic analyst.
At present, we are involved in the biggest electoral or post-electoral crisis since the start of what has been called the democratic transition that began in 1985, which was completed by the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996. If we look carefully at the development of events that have taken place since the 2023 elections were called, we come across a series of illegalities, anomalies, abuses of power, in the registration of parties, or in the cancellation of candida tours and matches. In what constitutes an expression of the institutional disorder that exists.
But going back to the beginning of this note, when talking about 29 parties with legal registration, one would think that they are 29 public law institutions, whose functions start from having an ideology, or ideological principles, with a political program or at least, with ideas that would point towards a program. It is not the case. To tell the truth, if we stick to the classics of political parties, especially Duverger, we do not find anything written by this gentleman in the daily life of the so-called parties. As with everything, there will be some exceptions.
There are no organic structures, there is no program, and with ideology, when one of its representatives is asked, what we hear is a string of inconsistencies, lies covered in high-sounding phrases, but which generally say nothing. Much has to do with the idea that has been sold and proliferated about the end of ideologies or their exhaustion. Being on the right or on the left no longer says anything to these characters. But the most serious thing is that they do not know where the differences between one and another ideological creed lie.
However, the ideology of the left has in general the principle of collective benefits, while that of the right, part of the individual benefit. And then the construction of a series of institutions that would seek the common or personal good by various means. And then there are other issues that separate one current from another. more or less state More public investment or less investment. More taxes or less taxes. More subsidies to economic sectors or subsidies to social sectors. There is no way to get lost.
In a few words, the idea that there are no ideologies is at least a big lie, although it is true that in these days, the basic assumptions that I point out in the previous paragraph have not changed and that the underlying issues of the country continue as they did many years ago. This does not mean that the ways and means of approaching each of these issues continue to be those that were in fashion in the 20th century or that one has to resort to the realm of anything goes to justify anything.
But we are also witnessing the presence of new issues that need to be addressed with a broader vision than the left-right dichotomy could express. Thus, for example, the issue of the environment leaves no room for the most hackneyed expressions about these ideologies, or ways of thinking about different things. There is, although one does not want to admit, the primacy of the collective over the individual. This is the case of what we call climate change. For this, it is necessary to stop thinking about limited sovereignty or full sovereignty. Like it or not, the solution to this type of issue is multidimensional. It affects the internal as well as the external of each country or region or groups and countries.
Something similar occurs with migrations in the present era. Whether it is understood or not, accepted or not, it is a matter that has to do with several countries at the same time. And in this regard, there should be new legislation where the rights of migrants is the starting point and arrival point, without the sovereign rights of each of the countries being the determining factor. It is something difficult to see, to accept, but it has to do with the new realities of this first quarter of the 21st century.
The issue that I wanted to highlight is that, although these new problems do not necessarily have a left or right approach, they are part of the new issues that have to be analyzed from the different ideological positions, and come to the conclusion that they have to be addressed yes or yes, with the interest placed on the people, not on other variables that, of course, come into collision many times, perhaps most of the time.
The whole detour is for the simple reason that, if there is a misunderstanding or lack of information on these issues, the Guatemalan political parties should have, at least, a clearer idea of democracy, a better approximation of what an electoral process means rather than feign insanity or wait for their “opportunity” by way of silence, or behaving well…. so as not to suffer the consequences for his belligerent attitude in defense of democracy.
This has to do directly with the shameful silence of the losing political parties in the first round of elections. 28 or 29 games, they are silent. Except for the two that go to the second round. The rest is the silence that makes others sad. It seems that the actions of the MP, the TSE, the CC, the CSJ or the citizen expressions about the process and the intricacies that we see daily, occur in other countries, with other actors and they count for nothing and for nothing.
As a friend told me, the majority of existing parties, or parties that seem to be parties, do not care about democracy and its institutions, what matters to them is the exercise of power, obtained no matter how, with what means, but, above all, in order to do fat business with public finances and in the shadow of the institutions of the Guatemalan state. All because they are electoral “microenterprises”, whose purpose is business, not public management. This is what is at the bottom of the silence of the political parties today.
I can understand that it is not clear what the purposes of the party that is at the center of the storm are, such as Semilla, but I cannot understand that due to these differences of opinion there is silence, in the face of what could become a coup d’état with Vaseline, and the democratic process that we saw from where it began is truncated. In another order of ideas, it would seem that this original vice in the country’s political party system, which, as I said, does not look like political parties, is what prevents them from coming out in defense of democracy, its principles, its values and its practice, now that it is threatened by a small group of people, socially isolated in the country and severely questioned internationally.
In this context, what is most noticeable as an absence is the absurd silence of the losing candidates in the first electoral round. They do not have the size of statesmen and for this reason they do not care about the attacks that the electoral process suffers these days. All these shocks in the processes and actions of different institutions do not seem to affect them. The only thing they regret, it seems, is that they did not have to be part of the business they thought. So our political system.
