2023-05-03 08:07:25
Oversights in politics are paid sooner or later and more when they try to make up, hide or endorse others without convincing grounds. Groups and candidates usually hold third parties responsible for the consequences of their manifest intolerance, patterns of action, links, absences, conflicts of interest, discursive errors or exhausting decisions made by certain representatives that end up damaging the image of the entire political option.
The latter occurred with two inexplicable decisions within the same case: the first was from the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), which on April 25 yielded to the parties in the decision to include or not the names of candidates for deputies on the ballots, and the second was the vote of 16 prosecutors in favor of omitting the lists and placing only the symbols of the groups, a deprivation of public information to the citizen at the time of being at the polling station.
The justification for removing names was the limited space on the ballots and the reduced size of the font to be used. In any case, the original cause of the increase in payrolls is the proliferation of parties, the product of splits in previous organizations, the inability to establish agreements and the anxiety to create electoral vehicles that in the current process add up to 30 in contention.
The TSE magistrates have stumbled over the same stone more than once: boasting of democratic mechanisms before the parties, even though certain measures adopted end up violating fundamental rights. However, they present themselves to offer a range of plans, intentions and offers of transparency, renewal and inclusion.
Last January, the prosecutors decided, with the permission of the magistrates, to deny the media access to the sessions. The unanimous claim made them back down. The abuse of removing names from the ballots sparked outrage and opacity, even among observers of the process. The attempt to hide uncomfortable names with their respective wear and tear of ex-functionaries, defecting legislators or with requests for impropriety, relatives or close friends of leaders was exposed. Ultimately, why promote signs with faces and names of applicants, if their names could not be found on the ballot? So absurd.
The TSE raised yesterday in the session with prosecutors the review of the issue through another vote. Twenty-four prosecutors, including several repentant, endorsed the inclusion of names. The Republican Party, whose first candidate on the National List is Carlos Velásquez, Jimmy Morales’ former development minister, opposed including the names. Meanwhile, Citizen Prosperity, National Unity of Hope, Courage, National Advance Party and Republican Union abstained from voting.
Those who rectified are not doing the public a favor, because their obligation is to display transparency and openness, but at least they had the gesture of amending the plan. In the future, the goal should be an electoral reform that allows citizens to choose by name and not on prefabricated lists based on contributions, parental ties, or patronage. Meanwhile, the parties that used fallacies to resist exposing names convey a disturbing message: if that’s how it is when they are asking for the vote, what will they be like when they no longer need it.
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