Global Courant
When the public entity in charge of auditing the transparency and legitimate origin of the electoral financing of political parties sits idle and waits for them to deliver what they want to report, without rigorously checking the wasteful campaign expenses, the country is before the danger of falling into the sphere of influence of organized crime, drug trafficking and smuggling groups, and also of public works contractors who are only interested in profit and not the quality of the infrastructure, of voracious suppliers who only want to expand orders for inputs in State dependencies at exorbitant prices and if possible, fractionated, to try to evade control.
The conformism and indifference with which the Electoral Expenditure Oversight Unit validates the data presented by the parties in contention is astonishing. The last May report refers to an expenditure of Q12.3 million financed by private donors, a derisory figure if one observes the national display of advertising carried out by aspirants for mayoralties, deputies and the presidency, on billboards, radio ads, guidelines on social networks , but above all in tours and campaign events in which there is no shortage of deplorable —and prohibited— distributions of electrical appliances, bicycles, motorcycles, groceries and more.
A spending unit that only copies and pastes the reports of the organizations is anodyne, as if there were not enough precedents for the infiltration of dirty money with obvious intentions to take over positions of power. Said unit would honor its name if it actually inspected the publicity declared against the one installed or the activities carried out, with attached electronic invoices and the updated income declarations of the supposed financiers.
There are some parties that monopolize most of the spending, but even so, if the amount of Q12.3 million were distributed among the thirty participating organizations, the result would still be improbable, about Q410 thousand per party, which suggests the existence of lines of underground cash that play around the permissive, not to say negligent, electoral authority. The most unfortunate thing is that the citizens end up paying, multiplied by far, said clientelist and electoral investments.
“We cannot prevent them from doing this and that. They —the political parties— have to render accounts before the TSE for the expenses they make in the campaign”, was the discouraging response of magistrate Mynor Franco when asked why the Court does not penalize the groups that try to buy the vote through gifts and clientele raffles at rallies.
The conflicts of interest and the previous partisan loyalties of the magistrates elected in 2020 exhibit their most serious consequences in the electoral process. They are not the first, because they extended the life of a drug party, freed several more than questionable figures from prosecution for electoral crimes and now, as a climax, they unblushingly disclose the gaps in the campaign expense reports. It may be simple indolence or total inability to exercise the responsibility for which they were appointed. For this reason, it is necessary to remember that his election took place in a hurry, in a secretly armed legislative session, at the gates of closure due to the pandemic, which hindered any citizen claim. That, by the way, is another pending account of the legislative ruling party, many of whose members now want to be re-elected offering to serve the People.
Lax control of electoral spending is a danger
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