GUATEMALA:
Berger Elected President

Rightist Oscar Berger of the Great National Alliance (GANA) won the second round of elections on Dec. 28 with 54.1 percent of the votes over Álvaro Colom of the National Union of Hope (UNE), who obtained 45.8 percent.

Berger, a 56-year-old businessman, assumes the presidency on Jan. 14 for the next four years, receiving a country in which 57 percent of Guatemalans are living in poverty, there is a high degree of political instability and serious problems of corruption exist.

“The new president has to call a wide reaching national pact, because if he doesn’t the country will become ungovernable due to the number of hidden interests,” said political analysts Fernando Solís. “He will have to work on the basis of a great consensus because he faces a very fragmented congress, in which none of the political forces has an absolute majority.”

For the first time in many years, the legislature will not have a majority of the governing party: GANA has 54 or 148 deputies, the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) has 44. the UNE 32 and the National Advancement Party has 17. The rest of the deputies belong to minority parties, among them six of the leftist New Nation Alliance.

GANA — a coalition made up of the Patriotic Party, the Revolutionary Movement and the Party of National Solidarity — beat out nine parties in the Nov. 9 first round (LP, Nov. 19, 2003), including the governing FRG which hoped to stay in power by presenting former dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-1983), who is accused of grave human rights violations (LP, May 21 and Aug. 13, 2003).

The new president is likely to face great challenges, like the search for democratic governance, strengthening of political institutions and generation of policies aimed at creating better conditions for human rights and social welfare.

The main issue for Berger will be to achieve macroeconomic stability, establishing a “fiscal pact” that will improve the collections of taxes and contribute to the strengthening of the economy.

“It is necessary to hold a rapid and serious discussion about the economy because macroeconomic stability is weak but no government can carry out the changes alone,” Solís said.

For analyst Alvaro Velásquez, one of the positive aspects of the election of Berger is the confidence he inspires, as a businessman, with national and international investors, although he admitted that he will have to respond to crucial issues like social inclusion of the country’s indigenous peoples — 65 percent of the population is of Mayan origin —poverty and the fiscal deficit.

One point that should be dealt with by the new government is the Free Trade Agreement signed in mid-December between the United States and El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and which must be ratified by the parliaments of the respective countries. The accord, whose exact content is not known, has sparked strong resistance among businessmen and campesinos in the region (LP, Oct. 8, 2003) to the point that Costa Rica refused to sign it.

Velásquez considers that Berger will not be able to ignore, like other governments have, the Peace Accords of 1996, which put an end to 36 years of civil war (LP, Feb 19, 2001). The victims of the war totaled 200,000 deaths and disappearances, according to the Commission for Historical Clarification, sponsored by the United Nations, which attributed 93 percent of the human rights violations to the army and 3 percent to guerrilla organizations.

“There is an urgent need for fighting impunity because many of the violators of human rights are free and a large part of them will not respond to the courts for the crimes committed,” Velázquez said.

But the Peace Accords were not limited to establishing principles of justice and reconciliation but they tried to look at the causes of the civil war, such as exclusion of indigenous peoples and agricultural depression. At the same time, they called for the reduction of the armed forces, reform of the State and the tax system, compensation for the victims and reinsertion of combatants into society.

“The fundamental causes that gave rise to the armed conflict in 1960 such as the absence of economic and social rights of Guatemalans, are still not resolved,” said activist Orlando Blanco of the National Coordinator of Human Rights of Guatemala.