upcoming elections

As you may or may not know in September this year Guatemala will vote for her new president. Maybe Berger was not a good presidet but I think everyone agrees that he was not as bad as Portillo... But this is no excuse for all the things he promised and did not keep, the help he did not provide to his compatriots during the catastrophy caused by hurrican Stan in 2005 and many other things in which he and his gouvernment did fail. I don't know how much you guys read about Guatemala in the internacional press, well I guess not much more than that the IOC was here last week, but what is really alerting is that at the moment more people die from fire arms than during the civil war and up to today 274 women were killed this year (Guatemala has the second highest femicide rate in the world according to statistics that have been published in the Prensa Libre beginning of 2007). So Guatemala has a big security problem and there are more and more gangs who make the country an unsafe place to be (especially for Guatemalans with a business, bus drives and everyone else who these gangs or sould I say organized crime can get money from).
Like every 4 years just before the elections, crime rate is much higher than normal and more bus pilots got killed than ever in this first half of 2007. Is this just a coinsicence? Why does this happen? is what everyone is aking at the moment? And this violence and insecurity problem is the biggest topic for the presidents to be, everyone makes promises that they will solve the it. One party wants to solve it with "mano dura" the other one with better education... well whatever it is up to time to show what is coming next for Guatemala. The same big parties UNE, PP, GANA (presidencial party at the moment), FRG (Rios Montt, yes he is still alive and free, can you belive it) and now also ENCUENTRO (with Rigoberta Menchu as candidate) are going for the presidency. According to Prensa Libre the biggest chances are for UNE with Alvaro Colom or PP (Partido Patriota) with Otto Molina, ex general of the army. Here are some pictures from how the different parties make promotion for their own cause...


On Saturday we were in San Francisco el Alto and had to notice that Alvaro Colom was there too... What the politicans do is they go to all the places where the indigenous population is very high and then they make a big fiesta with music and free drinks and food and other gifts. As most of the people don't have the education to know what the whole elections are about or if they have they don't care because they resignated a long time ago, the parties are buying the votes with gifts. The party that gives away more gifts and has more posters throughout the whole country usually wins.

So the parties are not only putting up large posters ...

they also paint every stone and tree they can get hold of in their colors...




Unfortunately most people here don't belive that a new gouvernment can change anything and well, who know maybe they are right.
mtfbwy