Eduardo Suger for President

It's time for Eduardo Suger of CREO to make his move. Suger is in the second tier of Guatemalan presidential candidates. I don't have all his poll numbers but he's averaging about 5% since December. Not good, but worth fighting on. In addition, his chances might have just gotten better. He are his competitors.

First, there's Otto Perez Molina. Annie Bird, Co-Director of Rights Action, Jennifer Harbury, Human Rights Attorney, and Kelsey Alford-Jones, Director, Guatemala Human Rights Commission-USA, recently requested that Juan Méndez, the Special Raporteur on Torture in the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, investigate Perez Molina for human rights violations committed during the country's civil war. I'm not sure that the charges are new to anyone in Guatemala, but they still might hurt his political support. And then on Thursday, his daughter's bodyguard shot a municipal transit police officer. The officer remains in critical condition. That probably won't help him either.

Second, there's Sandra Torres. The TSE has made a living out of rejecting her candidacy because they believe that she divorced Alvaro Colom solely to circumvent the constitutional prohibition on relatives of the president from becoming president. Sorry, but that's what they call fraud. UNE and GANA are now postponing their assemblies scheduled for this weekend.

Prensa Libre

Third, Manuel Baldizon of LIDER has been slightly ahead of Suger in most of the polls. Baldizon hasn't necessarily done anything wrong, but LIDER's mayoral candidate in San José Pinula, Luis Marroquin, remains in jail after having killed his two main competitors and then faking an attempt on his life so as to throw authorities off the scent. Following Marroquin's arrest, Baldizon tried to draw some distance between his candidacy and party and the accused killer. He said that Marroquin hadn't been LIDER's candidate for at least two weeks. LIDER also tried the excuse that they didn't know that much about Marroquin when he was chosen as their mayoral candidate and that they should be blamed because he was such a bad guy.

Another one of Suger's close competitors is Harold Caballeros of the Viva-EG coalition. Caballeros just found out, however, that he isn't allowed to run for president either because he is an evangelical minister. Caballeros claims that he hasn't been active for the last five years so the ban does not apply to him. 

As for the other candidates, nobody knows who they are. I forgot, there's one more candidate Suger has to worry about. Alejandro Giammattei (CASA) just entered the race after being let out of prison. 

Dr. Suger is a Ph.D. in Mathematical Physics from the University of Texas at Austin and says that education is the way to move Guatemala forward. During the presidential debate two weeks ago, Suger said that the country needs more than foreign troops to fight drug trafficking and organized crime and that he was open to the possibility of legalizing drugs. However, he fears that the US would make Guatemala suffer as a result. He also thought that it was fair if Guatemalan elites paid more in taxes to finance security.         

It's getting late in the game, but Suger could creep up towards the number two position in the next series of polls and that might not be such a bad thing for Guatemala.

A Big Fat No from the Salvadoran Business Community

Following Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's June visit to Guatemala, some were optimistic that Central American elites were beginning to see the light (they need to pay more in taxes) with regards to strengthening state institutions in order to fight organized crime and drug trafficking. I wasn't convinced that a consensus was actually emerging and the response of the Guatemalan business community backed me up. 

In El Salvador, President Mauricio Funes and members of his administration also approached the Salvadoran business community in order to convince them of the need to pay a greater share of taxes. Their response was pretty similar to that of Guatemalan businessmen. Funes, the Secretary of Strategic Affairs, and the ministers of Justice and Security, Treasury and Defense said that they wanted to institute a tax at no more than 1.5% on individual and business assets estimated at a value of over $500,000. By doing this, they hoped to raise $380 million over the next three years. Funes argued that the government needed additional tax revenue for military aircraft and frigates to intercept drug trafficking. 

As Fernando de Dios stated in his Contrapunto article

But this proposal, like any other that has to do in this country to make the rich pay more taxes, was rejected outright by private enterprise.

The National Association of Private Enterprise (ANEP), the Salvadoran Association of Industrialists (ASI), and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry responded with a big fat "no." 

• Funes didn't come up with a comprehensive security plan. Each ministry instead asked for additional funds to focus on its piece of the puzzle. 
• Military aircraft and boats would not solve the problem of daily living  in El Salvador. 
• The government presented a solution to a fiscal problem rather than an insecurity problem.
• The government requested money to help pay for existing security policies and not funds to support new initiatives. 
• They won't support a tax increase until they have more confidence in the government's ability to carry out a successful plan.
• They won't support a tax increase until they are convinced that there is effective oversight into how the funds are spent. 

And then there's the if you make us pay more in taxes, we're not actually going to pay any more in taxes because we will pass off any and all tax increases to the Salvadoran people through higher prices and layoffs.

I can't say that I would have expected anything different from the heads of ANEP, ASI, and the Chamber of Commerce. Given their history on taxes and their relationship with the current FMLN government, no one should expect anything different no matter how much the Salvadoran people suffer as a consequence.

Candidates Dropping Likes Flies in Guatemala

From a November 2010 post on Guatemala Gears up for 2011

Another other interesting discussion from the article is that, as of today, several of the most likely 2011 candidates are barred from running under existing rules. Article 186 of the constitution would seem to ban Sandra Torres de Colom and Zury Rios Montt.  Torres should not be able to run because she is related to the current president. Zury Rios Montt, on the other hand, should not be able to run because her father came to power in a military coup.

Former president Álvaro Arzú is a third candidate who will have trouble running. Article 187 bans presidential reelection under any circumstances.

The IPS article does not talk about Harold Caballeros of Visión con Valores (Viva). Caballeros might not be able to run because Article 186 also prohibits the leaders of religious groups and cults. I'm not sure that anyone knows what is going to happen next year, but I wouldn't be surprised if one or two of them find a way to run.

Okay, so this last prediction isn't looking very good. Torres' candidacy has been blocked three different times by the TSE. Zury Rios declined the FRG's invitation to be its presidential candidate because of the party's lack of campaign resources and "unfair competition." Alvaro Arzu decided to run for reelection as mayor of Guatemala City and leave it up to his wife to run for president on the Unionist Party's ticket.

And now on Wednesday, the Citizen's Registry nixed Viva-EG presidential candidate Harold Caballeros from the list of candidates because he is an evangelical pastor. Caballeros has been polling fifth for most of the campaign season. Caballeros rejected the TSE's ruling because he says that he stopped ministering in 2006.

It's no wonder that 80% of all Guatemalans believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction and that 70% believe things are worse under Colom than they were under Berger.