Jordán Rodas and Thelma Cabrera announced their visit to the Basque Parliament on their networks, which is striking since this parliament approves the budget for Basque public cooperation. The Peasant Development Committee was favored with millions of quetzals from Basque public cooperation between 2016 and 2021, which seems disturbing, since this cooperation agency promotes changes to the Guatemalan constitution and for this, it has a political party: the Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples (MLP-CODECA).
Roxana Orantes Cordova
Jordán Rodas and Thelma Cabrera have been on an international tour for several days. During their tour they visited, among others, the headquarters of the European Parliament, in Brussels, Belgium, and the Basque Parliament, which decides the destination of the funds granted by the Basque government’s cooperation.
This data draws powerful attention and should mean a red alert for the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), in charge of ensuring transparency in electoral financing, since it is assumed that no political party should hold funds from a foreign authority, especially if, as in the case of the Basque government, this authority tries to influence the Guatemalan constitution to be changed to comply with what they consider acceptable parameters and are nothing more than the slogans of the Sao Paulo Forum: “abya yala, Mother Earth , Good Living and the national division towards a «plurinational state».
This is because the Peasant Development Committee (CODECA) is one of the main beneficiaries of the millionaire funds that the Basque government diverts to other countries, coming from the tax collection in their country.
Visiting the financiers?
In the networks of former Human Rights Ombudsman Jordán Rodas, comments abound about his visit to the Basque Parliament, where he denounced that Guatemala is on the brink of electoral fraud. This affirmation is dangerous, because the MLP-CODECA chose to bet on mayoralties and councils, and to achieve a considerable number of municipalities and seats, it could lead to their being accused of complicity with the fraud that they are denouncing today.
On his Twitter account, the former PDH expressed his satisfaction at how “well received” both politicians were in the Basque country, where “we have felt in agreement with the solidarity towards the MLP couple.”
Meanwhile, Thelma Cabrera, who despite being presidential and an organic militant of the MLP-CODECA is relegated to the leadership of Rodas, mentioned more than once that her fight is for a “constituent for a plurinational state”, words that are repeated insistently in the objectives of the millionaire donations that the Basque authority transferred to CODECA between 2014 and 2021.
More than a proselytizing discourse or an exhibition of ideological identity, Cabrera’s statements are literal repetitions of the terms of reference imposed on them by their Basque donors: plurinational state, constituent and mother earth.
For this reason, it seems natural that they have been received with great fanfare by CODECA’s sponsors. It remains to be seen if after the general elections the pairing of the party that emerged from the NGO most favored by the Basque authority, achieves results that satisfy its donors and ideologues.
Millions of quetzales to promote changes to the Guatemalan constitution from the Basque government
In the portal of the basque cooperation there are projects that have the Peasant Development Committee (CODECA) as a partner. In the screenshot of that page you can see the amount of each financing, as well as the objectives of each project.
It is disturbing to see that the interests of Basque public cooperation do not include the construction of schools, provision of drinking water or the creation of health centers, but instead promote changes to the Political Constitution of the Republic with project titles such as:
“Constitution of the constituent power from the indigenous peoples and popular sectors for the generation of structural changes aimed at the creation of a plurinational state”, with a cost of 598,606.50 euros or:
“Walking towards Good Living in Guatemala, through a popular and plurinational constituent process promoted by indigenous peoples and popular sectors”, for which the taxpayers of that country paid six hundred thousand euros in 2019 and similar figures in 2014, 2017 , 2018 and 2021.
The following table can be found on the Basque public cooperation portal: