By George Santos
This slogan that we shout in the public streets of the country in 2015 arose from the demonstrations in the face of the crisis, exacerbated and raised by corruption and impunity. CICIG has demonstrated with scientific evidence that the office of the ministers of the then president, the military Otto Pérez Molina, was part of the criminal structure known as “La Línea”. For five months we have contributed to the demands of our political system to demand something completely different, and in the 2019 electoral process we found more of the same. Instead of offering a remedy, those elections continued to plague democracy in the face of this sad cycle of corrupt governments. We survived the bad joke of the FCN government and again in 2019, we had to choose between the bad and the worst. With a little more than 13% of the total vote, Alejandro Giammattei continued the consolidation of the state’s authoritarian and dictatorial power by attacking the states and using force.
In 2015 we survived Pérez Molina and Baldetti, in 2019 Jimmy Morales, Jovel and Degenhart. From 2020 we are driven by Giammattei, Miguel Martínez and Consuelo Porras. But in 2023 the election process is met, which is led by the Court of fragile faith; the son of La Línea, the recruitment and general recruitment of public institutions. From the popular proposal of 1985, little less than desire and goodwill is left. The autonomy of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, broken. Independence of the Judiciary, memory and legitimization of PDH, a beautiful story from the recent past. Guatemalan democracy is currently under threat due to the complications of the 2023 electoral process.
Those who are our witnesses of this historical moment, hopefully soon it will be nothing more than a myth, see how the theft of independence and autonomy institutions breaks democracy. The hacker-made laws and regulations have left candidates, which probably have the only thing in common, that they are not “anointed” powers that decide and impose in the region of disorder. What you and I have decided with our vote has previously been established in a ready and tasteless cabinet, under the protection of corrupt and unpunished officials. They do not allow the human right to choose the right to choose.
As if it were not enough that courts, police and judges lack independence, citizens lack information due to the closure of the media, the harassment of independent journalists and the criminalization of protest. In this mission we fear that we shall have to resort to repulse with the smallest indications, and choose between poison and insecticide; between the military oligarchic criminal structure and another narco-corrupt one. In the end, it serves as usual at the mercy of continuing the criminal dictatorship. In these conditions, what do we want elections? If at the end of the day, the criminal trial has already taken place.
