Corrupts stole my country. Again. More tomorrow (I'm tired and going to bed). By now, have a look at my voting ballot (spanish):
http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/3530/00006dk4.jpg
Ohoho. A patriot party? And here I thought the word was out of vogue...
Well at least you're not in Pakistan.
I guess that's not really much consolation right?
OK, so here is the story.
The president voting system in Guatemala works like this: There are two rounds. The first one has all the registered parties. If no party gets more than 50% of the votes, there is a second round between the top two.
On the first round, the choices were lame. We had military freaks, corrupts, illiterate people, ex guerrilla leaders, and a bunch of other shameful stuff. Between them all, there was the owner of a university, who has several masters on administration and engineering, and a transparent past and work plan. The only problem was that he decided to go with a new party, to be "away from the corruption already rotting the country", or something like that... and, of course, the founding was lame and he ended up 4th on the first round.
So, who were the first two places on the first round? Well, as you can see in the ballot, there were Alvaro Colom, from the UNE party (Union Nacional de la Esperanza... meaning something like National Union of Hope), and General Otto Perez Molina, from the Partido Patriota (Patriot Party). But who are they?
Alvaro Colom is the niece of Manuel Colom Argueta, who was a syndicalist leader (or something like that) in the 70's and was killed because of his patriotic ideas in the civil war (the civil war started in '60 and ended in '96). So, Alvaro Colom is said to have taken advantage of his last name to win the trust of the country. How ever, unlike his uncle, he is not so free of guilt. From 2000 to 2003, the president of the country was Alfonso Portillo, from the FRG party (Frente Republicano Guatemalteco... Guatemalan Republican Front. Oh, by the way, now that I ended writing my post I see I'm lacking something here: The leader of the FRG is José Efraín Rios Montt. I'll talk a little about him on the Perez Molina part). That's the period with the biggest rate of corruption in the country history. A lot of the FRG members have gone to jail for it, including Marco Tulio Abadio, a guy that stole... well, I don't remember how much, but it were some millions. What does this have to do with Colom? Well, guess who paid for the UNE campaign on 2003. 1... 2... 3... and yeah, that's right, Marco Tulio Abadio and the FRG. What does it say about someone who goes with the same party to the elections 4 years later?
Otto Perez Molina is an army general. He has been one for ages. What's more: he participated on a coup d'etat against Efrain Rios Montt (a dictator from '82 to '83, the "darkest period in the civil war", where the most, both in number as in gruesome level, massacres happened. Remember, Rios Montt is also the leader of the FRG, the corrupt party that ruled the country from 2000 to 2003 and gave founds to the UNE's campaigh), and helped on the later governments. That sounds actually good, right? Well, if you know Guatemalan history... no, not really. He helped on totally corrupt governments... but bah, that's not really that different from Colom, amirite? Well, what about this? He was implicated by the archbishop about the assassination of Judge Edgar Ramiro Elias Ogaldez in '94 (by the way, the archbishop was murdered a little later. I'm not blaming Perez Molina, but... oh, well...); and that's not all. He is implicated in several human rights violations (a lot of them, murders). Cute, right? He has also been implicated with CIA death squads (Clinton accepted in '99 that they existed in Guatemala). Well, he has done some really nice looking stuff. I don't want to write more about him, so read this: http://tenpercent.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/the-war-on-democracy-guatemala-otto-perez-molina/
Last sunday (november 4), the second round was held. Colom won, 48% to 52%. He'll start his new charge the first days of next year.
Some people say it was a good thing that Colom won, but... I'm just not sure. Of course, I'm not saying that it would have been better if Perez Molina had won... I'm saying that it would have been the same. My country is going sharply to the gutter no matter what.
Oh, yean, and I know, tl;dr... but I wanted to release a little stress o_O
PD: Oh, let's translate my ballot. On Colom's part, I wrote "Corrupto" which means, of course, corrupt. On Otto Perez Molina's part, I wrote "Asesino", Assassin. In between, I wrote "El país se va a la mierda", which literally means "The country is going to 'shit'"... so I would translate it as "The country is gonna get raped o_O"
I feel simpathy for you. Usually the political game it's so twisted and sick, that you'll probably love to put a bullet in those fuckers' head.
