Global Courant 2023-04-20 11:06:48
Throughout the history of governments of the last three decades, no official party has been re-elected, no matter how eagerly they eat or no matter how much propaganda and resources they throw away. The presidential replacement invariably arrives because of defaults, abuses at the cost of the treasury and the inconsistencies of each period. The pacts end up taking their toll with all their interests, the electoral dispute aggravates folly and despair, in addition to spurring last-minute ambitions and fears of post-government reality.
Period after period, attempts to leave a hand tied to substitutes are also recurring, by transferring temporary personnel contracts to the payroll, signing harmful union agreements or starting projects that will not be completed in the period, due to incapacity or impossibility, all behind the back of the taxpayers. This represents a concrete and growing cost, given the clientelist debts that usually accompany the new government, officials and benches.
In any case, each new government establishes its actions and ministerial titles based on a transition process and the commitments assumed in the campaign. In the case of secretariats and presidential commissions, with much greater reason. That is why the sudden extension of the Presidential Commission against Corruption (CPCC), created by President Alejandro Giammattei Falla in 2020 and whose closure was scheduled for January 24, 2024, ten days after the delivery of the position, is striking. Yesterday the government agreement was published by which the existence of said dependency is extended until 2028, as if such a decision did not correspond to whoever succeeds him in eight months and 23 days.
In 2015, the government of the extinct Patriot Party, chaired by Otto Pérez Molina and Roxana Baldetti, today in prison, tried and convicted of corruption cases, created the Presidential Commission for Transparency, supposedly to combat any illegal practice in the State. It obviously failed, was shut down, and remained only a bureaucratic paradox.
In 2020, Giammattei Falla created the CPCC in order to prevent irregularities, receive complaints and, apparently, investigate suspected cases of illegal acts in the Executive. From the beginning, it was questioned whether this function does not contravene, supersede or hinder the action constitutionally delegated to the Comptroller General of Accounts (CGC) and the Public Ministry (MP). Said commission costs around Q10 million per year, with which its operation in three years is around Q30 million, of which 90% is used to pay personnel. In his 2022 report, he details that he received 151 complaints and of these 84 were “concluded”, but only 51 came to constitute complaints in the CGC and the MP, which in turn must investigate the cases.
It is worth questioning how much reliability an investigation by the Executive can have within itself, especially if it involves prominent profiles. In addition, spending Q10 million a year to obtain 151 complaints is an exaggerated waste, especially since many “resolved” cases correspond to trifles and only two of the complaints have reached legal proceedings. There is also no external way of knowing the total content of the complaints, since the possibility of “anonymity” is offered for these, but an email and a way of contacting the complainant are requested. Any presidential candidate with two fingers of brains and five fingers of dignity would have already raised his voice due to the extension of a nondescript, unproductive and suspicious entity.
Presidential imposition on the next government
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