Hash
Hashemite
Moderator
Atlas Superstar
Posts: 32,409
|
 |
« on: August 12, 2019, 08:14:25 PM » |
|
Alejandro Giammattei is the next president of Guatemala, elected with 58% of the vote in a second round ballot yesterday, defeating former first lady Sandra Torres who won 42%. It is worth pointing out that turnout collapsed to 42.7% in the runoff, the lowest since 1999 and down from a bit over 61% in the first round.
Giammattei, 63, is essentially a fascist and a criminal, which makes him similar to nearly every other president in Guatemalan history. In a few years months, he will turn out to be incredibly corrupt and in cahoots with the criminal structures embedded within the state and the military, just like nearly every other president in Guatemalan history. The difference with the outgoing incumbent, the now very unpopular criminal Jimmy Morales, will barely be perceptible -- except that, I guess, Giammattei seems to have the personality to be even more authoritarian.
Giammattei studied medicine and likes to be called doctor, but barely practised medicine, and has worked in the public or private sector - thanks to his connections - since the 1980s and has been running for president for the past 12 years -- this is his fourth successive presidential candidacy. Giammattei was coordinator of electoral processes in the 1980s, served as advisor to a vice president in the early 1990s and was a consultant for private sector firms for the rest of the 1990s. He unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Guatemala City in 1999 and 2003.
Giammattei's sole claim to fame, and the basis for much of his political 'appeal' over the past decade, is his time as director of the penitentiary system between 2005 and 2007 under president Óscar Berger. At the time, he admitted that he had a 'remarkably scarce' knowledge of the subject matter. Under his watch, in September 2006, the government with 3,000 police and military forces launched an operation to "regain control" of the Pavón prison, which had been 'abandoned' by the authorities to the inmates since the 1990s. Seven inmates were extrajudicially assassinated during this operation. This operation and associated 'tough on crime' persona served as a trampoline for his first presidential candidacy, in 2007, as the candidate of the ruling party 'GANA'. He finished third with 17.2% of the vote.
In 2010, the CICIG and public ministry (MP) charged Giammattei and others, including the then-interior secretary and then-director of the police, with illicit association and extrajudicial assassination. Giammattei, declaring himself a political prisoner, turned himself in after a failed attempt to flee to Honduras and was briefly incarcerated for three months. In 2011, a judge closed the case against him, citing lack of evidence. Most of the other people charged in the case have also been absolved, although the then-police chief was sentenced to life in prison by a Swiss court in 2014. As one commentator put it, Giammattei's greatest political success is to have led the penitentiary system when 7 prisoners were murdered.
He ran again in 2011, this time for a party called 'CASA', but finished second to last with only 1.1% of the vote. He ran again in 2015, this time for a party called 'Fuerza', and finished fourth with 6.5%. To put it otherwise: this man has been running for elected office at regular intervals for 20 years (since 1999), has been running for president every four years for 12 years now and during the past two decades has only held one public office (director of the penitentiary system). Which begs a pretty important question - where does he get the money to do all this? Given that Guatemala basically has no serious campaign finance laws, the fun surprise of the next four years will be finding out which criminals have been financing this guy. Various media investigations indicate that Giammattei has surrounded himself with very sketchy people throughout his political career - including people associated with drug trafficking, criminal mafias, corruption scandals and all that other cool stuff. He also has links to people/businessmen also close to outgoing corrupt president Jimmy Morales. Giammattei, like Morales, has ties to retired general Francisco Ortega Menaldo, leader of one of the many super-powerful criminal structures embedded deep within the military. He also has the favours of the ultra-conservative business/economic elites, among the main culprits in the sorry state of Guatemala today and complicit in the continued erosion of the rule of law. A very similar coalition to Morales. Off to a great start!
This year, Giammattei was the candidate of a new party, 'Vamos', which is undoubtedly no less artificial and fake than all other parties, but unlike his previous parties, 'Vamos' is built around Giammattei. It has also managed to grow very quickly into a party with bases in every part of the country, which I guess also raises questions. Giammattei was not among the favourites of this election, but he benefited from the controversial disqualification of two of the strongest candidates, former attorney general Thelma Aldana (who, as a threatening anti-corruption candidate with a serious chance, seems to have been the victim of a plot concocted by the powers that be to eliminate her from the race) and Zury Ríos, daughter of former military dictator and genocidal monster Efraín Ríos Montt. Getting lucky like that, he finished second in the first round - albeit with just 12.1% - and qualified for the second round against Sandra Torres of the ostensibly centre-left 'social democratic' Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE). Given that, as the last election had already shown, Torres is, fairly or unfairly, loathed by a good chunk of the population, this actually made him the favourite in the runoff.
Sandra Torres is the ex-wife of former president Álvaro Colom (2007-2011), who was not quite as horrible as most of his predecessors (and, especially, successors) but still pretty sh**tty. Torres was already unusually powerful during her husband's presidency, responsible for the social programs for which the UNE government is still remembered (positively among the poor, much less so among the wealthier urban classes). In a blatant case of political deviousness, she divorced him in 2011 in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to circumvent the constitution (which bans family members and relatives of the incumbent president from running) and run in 2011. She ran in 2015, and was soundly defeated in the second round by Jimmy Morales, then an attractive novelty/outsider figure, losing 34.5% to 65.5%. In 2018, her (ex-)husband was briefly detained as part of a corruption investigation into his administration. Torres is also facing an investigation for illegal campaign financing in her 2015 presidential campaign; unlike Thelma Aldana, she was protected by the attorney general, who delayed her case for five months and only authorized prosecution of the case one day after her registration as presidential candidate (with immunity). But in a matter of days, she will lose her immunity as a presidential candidate and will now be facing prosecution - and won't receive any favours from the president-elect, who explicitly campaigned on a familiar platform of "lock her up".
As the first round showed, the UNE is the party with the strongest base (and basically one of the very few parties which isn't an empty shell which survives for one cycle), especially in rural areas -- which are poorer and benefited most from the UNE government's social programs, as these social programs also served obvious clientelistic purposes. She won 1.1 million votes or 22.1% in the first round, slightly more than in 2015, and the UNE emerged as the largest party (by miles) in the incoming congress with 52 out of 160 seats (24 more than previously). But Sandra Torres is toxic in a second round. Torres won 1.38 million votes (vs. 1.26 million in the 2015 runoff), just 272,000 more votes than in the first round. Her attempts at expanding her base failed miserably. Giammattei, on the other hand, gained nearly 1.3 million votes between both rounds, even more than Morales gained between both rounds in 2015.
Torres, although still claiming to be a social democrat, moved to the conservative right in this campaign an ultimately unsuccessful bid to curry favours with the super-powerful business elites and broaden her appeal. Social programs (CCT, food bags, schools etc.) remained the basis of her program, even though there is nothing revolutionary about then, but the rest of her economic platform included notably neoliberal ideas like more private investment and 'economic corridors' with free trade zones. Her running mate, Carlos Raúl Morales, was foreign minister from 2014 to 2017 under the far-right corrupt governments of Otto Pérez and Jimmy Morales and then worked for cellphone provider Tigo. She has become socially conservative, strongly opposed to same-sex marriage (and gay rights in general) and abortion to gain support among evangelicals, whereas in 2015 she appeared more liberal. She also adopted a more 'tough on crime' outlook on security, calling on putting the army on the streets to combat crime, a far cry from Colom's initial promise of "fighting violence with intelligence".
Giammattei is a traditional conservative. His economic ideas reflect a blind faith in the supposed benefits of neoliberalism and the private sector: more free trade zones, public-private partnerships, greater legal security for investors, boost exports by looking for new markets and trade agreements, create 1 million+ jobs with more labour flexibility, part-time work and differentiated salaries. He has, to be sure, also gone after the UNE's vote by promising many of the same basic stopgap social programs associated with that party. He has hardline 'tough on crime' image, and promises notably to prosecute minors as as adults and to treat extortionists as terrorists. He also supports the death penalty. Against Torres, he campaigned against "the old politics" (i.e. Torres/UNE). He is very socially conservative, and his campaign speeches made constant reference to God. There's also an obvious machista element with him, like when he says that he has the sufficient amount of testosterone to fight organized crime.
Both candidates claimed to be deeply committed to the fight against corruption, but both of them opposed the most valuable institution Guatemala has had to fight corruption over the past decade or so, the CICIG, whose mandate is expiring in September and won't be renewed. Both Torres and Giammattei opposed continuation of the CICIG (you may remember the long saga, over the past years, with Morales' war against the CICIG); both candidates obviously have reasons to hate the CICIG and serious anti-corruption prosecution or judicial reform. Both candidates were also critical of the outgoing administration's signature of the migration/'safe third country' agreement with the Trump admin, although it seems that Giammattei's main criticism was less its contents and more the fact that he wasn't involved in it.
Giammattei will be a disastrous president, another in a long list, who won't change anything but will only help to further his self-interest, that of his inner circle and more broadly that of the failed system which has controlled Guatemala for much of its history. Without the CICIG to stop them, the system is now emboldened and has secured its hold on the country. See, for example, this analysis: nomada.gt/pais/elecciones-2019/giammattei-el-fracasado-sistema-guatemalteco-se-da-una-bocanada-de-oxigeno/
Map:
Strong rural-urban divide, which is usual in Guatemalan election. For the third time in a row, 'the cities' have 'put' a president. Giammattei won 74.5% in the department of Guatemala, taking 83.5% in Guatemala City, 81.6% in Mixco and 75% in Villa Nueva. He won 70.5% in Quetzaltenango department, and over 80% in the departmental capital of the same name.
|
