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1730 M Street NW, |
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Council On Hemispheric Affairs |
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Monitoring Political, Economic and Diplomatic Issues Affecting the Western Hemisphere |
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Memorandum to the Press 04.01 |
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Berger December victory could be
promising, but recent history says “be cautious”
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Unreformed and unrepentant military
poses mortal danger to UN-brokered 1996 UN Peace Accord, which was ignored
during Portillo’s term in office.
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Free elections don’t guarantee
substantial changes in the status quo.
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Guatemala’s drug activities predictably
will continue to play a major role, but they won’t get in the way of CAFTA.
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Nothing in Berger’s past indicates that
he is a crusading reformer: what should be a concern to him is a lack of
attention to the indigenous population, fear of armed forces, a low priority
for social justice, very little recognition of labor’s rights, and the
toleration of corruption in the courts and police.
The Guatemalan
electoral process that began in May 2003 with the official commencement of the presidential
race finally ended on December 27 with the election of a new president, Oscar
Berger of the Grand National Alliance (GANA). He will take office on January
14, after receiving a sweeping 54.13% of the vote tally compared to 45.87% for
his opponent, Alvaro Colom, of the New Nation Alliance (UNE). The number of Guatemalans voting reached
46.78%, slightly less than half of the nation’s 5 million registered voters but
still a relatively high a percentage, although it did not match the figure of
over 58% in last November’s general elections.
Thus, in 2004, the presidency will be controlled by GANA, while the
158-member congress will be composed of ten parties. Of these, four are destined to dominate,
including GANA with 47 deputies, the former ruling party the Guatemalan
Republican Front (FRG) with 43, UNE with 32, and the National Advance Party
(PAN) with 17. An earlier agreement was
reached among GANA, UNE, and PAN to share control of the congressional Junta Directiva, with the FRG pointedly
excluded. Also, the presidency of the
Congress, which General Efraín Riós Montt will vacate, will go to a deputy from
the UNE.
How he will be
able to do what none of his predecessors have been capable of achieving—namely
exercising authority over the corruption and sheer violence which have been
dominant factors in Guatemalan life—would be dealt with by providing the press
complete transparency, including access to records of all public financial
transactions as well as a commitment to clarity on a number of counts against
General Riós Montt, including the staging of a coup in 1980 against the
government and the infamous “beans on bullets” campaign of genocide against the
country’s indigenous population during the strongman’s rule. Moreover, he specifically promised to support
efforts to prosecute the late dictator Riós Montt for his human rights abuses
while he ruled.
Reflecting his
backing by the country’s coffee and sugar farmers, who would be among its
notable beneficiaries, he indicated that he would wholeheartedly support
implementation of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). He also committed himself to consult with all
civic groups and parties in an effort to achieve consensus and a working “equipo” (team), a term he uses
repeatedly to describe his personal style for policy-making. Finally, Berger pledged to work for an
improved education system, full employment, rural development, and to reduce
the gap between rich and poor.
Although Berger
won the rather uneventful presidential run-off, his victory will not
automatically yield a successful economic plan or vigorous human rights
standards after decades of abusive rule which resulted in hundreds of thousands
of political killings. Recent bitter
experience under the North American Free Trade Agreement shows that subsidized
Central to
As in
Who is Berger?
Fifty-seven years old, and married into one of
The run-off
elections in which Berger eventually triumphed were virtually free of the kind
of violence that flawed the first round.
To oversee the electoral process, international groups provided several
hundred observers, while national bodies, including the coalition Mirador Electoral (ME) and the Human
Rights Ombudsman’s office, allocated several thousand observers to monitor the
contest. Almost unanimously the monitors
reported that the elections were “legitimate” and peaceful. Although there were administrative
deficiencies in the process, the general conclusion about the balloting was
summed up by Jannis Sakellariou of the European Union: “The second round was excellent from the
democratic point of view.”
Is
Should
the fact that both presidential candidates in the final round represented new
parties and movements basically formed since the 1999 elections be perceived as
a rejection of Guatemala’s gloomy modern political history? Some observers are interpreting the evolution
of legitimate party politics in a country that has had very little experience
with the democratic selection of its leaders as being a very important
development. Another sign of change in
Guatemalan politics is the overall increase in voter involvement registered in
the 2003 elections. The willingness of
thousands of voters to wait long hours to cast their ballots certainly
indicates a mounting interest on the part of citizens in participatory
democracy.
Also of note are
the growing numbers and the rising influence of broadly-based non-government
civic groups that are beginning to lodge specific social demands on the new
president. One of these is Mirador Electoral, which has become an
important high-minded electoral watchdog in the country; another is the Civic
Front for Democracy, which is a coalition of thousands of critics of the
current government. Together with
established organizations long serving the public, the coalition is developing
into a formidable civic action force that will be difficult even for the most
cynical political process to ignore.
So
far, Berger has been notably responsive to such civic groups which, among other
things, have demanded that he support the long ignored UN-brokered Peace
Accords of 1996. In fact, he already had
met with civic leaders pushing for such action along with Tom Koenigs, the head
of the United Nations Mission to Guatemala (MINUGUA), at a meeting arranged by
the UN body. Because the UN once again
has had to face reality by extending its final deadline for the full implementation
of the Peace Accords for yet another year, MINUGUA will be forced to revise its
plans and maintain a presence in the country in order to oversee the peace
accord’s implementation by working with a hopefully fully cooperating
government.
Berger also
committed himself to recognizing the identity of indigenous groups and to start
the process of promoting a multicultural nation by offering Nobel Prize winner
Rigoberta Menchu a position as a member of his equipo to work as the special ambassador
for improving relations with the country’s native groups. Berger also chose Helen Mack, director of the
Mack Foundation and sister of sociologist Myrna Mack (who was murdered by a
rightist death squad in 1990) as advisor on government security issues. He even offered an equipo appointment to his defeated election opponent, Alvaro Colom,
who refused the bid out of “respect to the million voters who supported” the
UNE in the election.
The
Dec. 30th Washington Post carried an editorial entitled “Central America’s
Progress,” in which it perhaps too hastily lauded Guatemala’s 2003 elections as
“encouraging,” since both of the leading candidates “trounced” the notorious
Rios Montt. “This encouraging outcome came
about in an atmosphere of relative tranquility – no significant violence was
reported, turnout was relatively high, and international observers declared the
vote free and fair.” Although
Guatemala’s political life obviously has a very long way to go toward resolving
its many often indecent episodes, and reforming its dysfunctional
institutions—a task over which the Post editorial writer is perhaps too
sanguine, and which seems almost impossible to achieve, the newspaper may not
be entirely mawkish in its estimation.
If this is so, it is because of the growing levels of civic rectitude on
the part of some of its most well-prepared citizens, which could provide the
country with a monumental watershed in its decades-long tragic history of
political assassinations and un-ending injustice.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
This analysis was prepared by Frank
Kendrick, PhD, COHA Senior Research Fellow.
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