Congress and the executive were always gonna be an uphill battle
About two weeks ago, I referred to Jimmy Morales as Meet the new boss, same as the old boss? His cabinet has some shady characters and now so does his party's bancada in Congress. I don't think that anyone should be surprised by those developments.
The people of Guatemala, CICIG, and the international community are going to have to pressure the Morales government and the congress to abide by the rule of law. Like the prosecutors office and the courts, progress in the executive and legislative branches and in municipal governments are likely to be incremental with their fair share of setbacks. There are no (few?) shortcuts. There needs to be more immediacy to some of the challenges confronting but Guatemala but also recognition that vested interested in corruption and in protecting impunity are so entrenched that the battle is going to be a long one.
As I mentioned in that initial post, I thought that those analysts who wrote for the Inter-American Dialogue's Latin America Advisor were too optimistic. Fortunately, Ricardo Barrientos published a post more in line with my thinking for the AULA blog with Hope Fading for Guatemalan Spring.
The people of Guatemala, CICIG, and the international community are going to have to pressure the Morales government and the congress to abide by the rule of law. Like the prosecutors office and the courts, progress in the executive and legislative branches and in municipal governments are likely to be incremental with their fair share of setbacks. There are no (few?) shortcuts. There needs to be more immediacy to some of the challenges confronting but Guatemala but also recognition that vested interested in corruption and in protecting impunity are so entrenched that the battle is going to be a long one.
As I mentioned in that initial post, I thought that those analysts who wrote for the Inter-American Dialogue's Latin America Advisor were too optimistic. Fortunately, Ricardo Barrientos published a post more in line with my thinking for the AULA blog with Hope Fading for Guatemalan Spring.
Since Morales took office, however, serious mistakes have caused confidence to dim.
- His reluctance or inability to answer questions from journalists and to refrain from underestimating audiences by telling silly jokes and childhood stories are raising concerns among observers of an emerging authoritarian personality.
- Secrecy surrounding his cabinet selection process has led to missteps...
- His first approach to Congress was only to reverse the position on 2016 public debt cuts that his representatives advocated last November...
- Instead of asking Congress for an urgently needed budget increase to solve ongoing shortages of medicines and equipment in public hospitals and clinics – almost a humanitarian tragedy, he accepted pharmaceutical company donations of expired medications – in a deal redolent of past corruption.
I'm not sure hope is fading. I sought of gave OPM the benefit of the doubt, at least for a few weeks, when he was elected in 2011. Not this time. Congress and the executive were always gonna be an uphill battle.
- Morales’s political party, Frente de Convergencia Nacional (FCN), has grown substantially in Congress by receiving “turncoat” congressmen, directly contradicting an important campaign promise...
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