Global Courant
Our conviction and commitment to the public to provide an integral, professional and balanced journalistic service never ends. There are always new situations, crises are looming, but in electoral processes opportunities are also glimpsed and yearned for to make a renewed country, promote a healthy State agenda and promote integral human development with honesty and efficiency. Yes, it is true that breaches and promises denied due to the inconsistencies of politicking are recurrent, but that is what the independent press is for and for this reason serious and constructive political discussion on the great challenges facing Guatemala is necessary.
The great national debate should not be limited to three months of campaigning. However, the ambiguities of the Electoral Law —product of incompetence or bad intention of deputies during the incomplete reform of 2016— serve as a pretext for certain political leaderships to withdraw, wash their hands and absent themselves when citizens most need their intervention. As a consequence of such deficiencies, pretexts have also been given to block the participation of certain candidates while there is discretionary laxity for others. Amending the plan to said rule is one of the enormous pending issues for the next legislature, since the current one got bogged down between pacts and pantomime.
The concrete thing is that Guatemalan citizens are 10 days away from the appointment with the polls, in a process marked by controversial decisions, questions of the performance of the electoral authorities and even public waste for patronage and electoral purposes without further reprimand or sanction on the part of of the TSE.
The tremendous mistake of politicians, who are not politicians, is to underestimate the intelligence of the citizenry. This disastrous attitude is detectable above all in those who hold extremist, intolerant and despotic positions, which by their very arrogance end up being relativistic.
Despite this environment, Prensa Libre and Guatevisión continue to develop information work focused on providing citizens with evidence to promote a Free Decision. Hence the name that encompasses electoral coverage, with the constant aspiration to maintain a total equidistance of options, a critical sense to question plans and space for diverse ideas. Today, Thursday June 15, the first stage of this coverage ends, whose core has been precisely the live interviews with presidential candidates. Sufficiently in advance and fully open to plan times, all registered profiles were invited. All confirmed, although two did not attend for reasons beyond the control of these media. The candidate of the Nosotros party, Rudy Reyes, canceled his attendance hours before the interview, according to what he said, due to a health condition. Nor was the candidate for the Valor-Unionista coalition, Zury Ríos, present, whose team excused themselves two days before the interview date, citing a saturated agenda. She clears herself out of respect for the audiences.
Interviews were also conducted with candidates for mayor of the capital and dialogues with aspiring deputies for the national list of 12 parties. The expert analysis completes this plural, inclusive and serious information service that is still available on our social networks. The goal is to support informed voting and encourage participation, because this is the only way to strengthen, defend and consolidate democracy. The decision is yours and no one else’s.
