Global Courant 2023-04-13 11:05:38
The ruling party in Congress and its side parties —which are still trying to pass for opponents in the electoral campaign— are already late with the attempt to approve populist, convenient and onerous initiatives, through which they try to appear interested in citizen security or try to obtain the favor of a certain sector of the population. With 77 days to go before the elections, there are too many omissions from the official parliamentary alliance throughout three years, three months and two weeks, including the recess of the previous fortnight, during which the legislative palace was even disinfected but survived the germ of demagogy.
In effect, the acceleration of electoral initiatives such as the one that seeks to reactivate the death penalty or increase at the last minute the number of beneficiaries of the bonus for the elderly only denote the fear of deputies that the public will bill them for the nonsense, waste and irresponsibility in the task that was temporarily delegated to them in 2019. And it is worth repeating: temporarily. It is symptomatic in every electoral process that sooner or later the letter of the death penalty is used as a rallying point for fear, indignation and desire for a strict application of the law against crime. For this reason, the escalations of robberies, extortions and murders with such offers of a “strong hand” are suspicious, or in any case extremely coincidental.
From legislators with rancid ancestry to some who are presidential candidates with salary —who logically should have left office in the hands of a substitute— vociferate to defend the option of managing the power to grant or not the presidential pardon, as if we were in a feudal monarchy. . In fact, they wish they were.
In order to effectively reduce the criminal incidence, one could begin by guaranteeing secure prisons, proof of racking and extortion communications, but the Executive did not achieve that or did not want to do it. Neither could they be claimed because the legislative ruling party blocked the interpellations of officials.
In the case of the bonus for the elderly, the trick of wanting to captivate unsuspecting votes with other people’s money is obvious; that is, from the treasury. More than Q300 million Guatemalans are at stake under this interested initiative. With that same money, malnutrition could be better attended to, effectively equip hospitals like the one in Chimaltenango —without rigged tenders, of course— or have two million school desks manufactured — at Q150 each, and if a better price is achieved, they would be more than they would cover the national demand for furniture in educational establishments. But no, in their desperation, the congressional leadership and the heads of similar blocs are pushing a short-term, expensive agenda that is totally unrelated to a serious approach to the country’s priorities.
Attracting the votes would have been so simple if they had acted with ethical, political and moral coherence. But the current legislature, led by the pro-government deputies Allan Rodríguez and Shirley Rivera, evaded, eluded, evaded, dodged, relegated or delayed, through various stratagems, the election of magistrates for the Supreme Court of Justice and Appeals chambers because they were convenient for it. the current ones; he could have responsibly discussed a new Civil Service Law, and he did not; a new Infrastructure Law, and it did not; procurement laws, competition laws and efficient budget distribution with sufficient transparency controls, and it did not. Now he wants to pretend in a few days what he failed to achieve in the previous 39 months.
Populist initiatives are late and sad
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