RadioGuate

This on-line community expands the flow of information through podcasts and blogs in English, Spanish and indigenous languages to further communication in the public interest.

It also initiates a flow of news and training programs designed to help rural journalists improve the local standards of their profession, and contribute to bettering the quality of life in physical transnational communities.

Functions of RadioGuate:

• Expand the informational capabilities of rural communities
• Build capacity for and network rural and indigenous journalists
• Act as a forum for open debate, news sharing, and storytelling
• Connect rural and urban sectors and transnational communities
• Provide a network through which community journalists discuss issues affecting their communities, share and identify common problems, and through dialogue, work to find solutions
• On-line community involving not only journalists, but also Guatemalan citizens in and out of the country

RadioGuate serves as:

journalism and community-building initiative

RadioGuate is not only a network of rural, urban, and international journalists, it is a powerful journalism and community-building initiative.

About the RadioGuate Members

GraciasVida Center for Media, a non-profit organization based in Antigua, Guatemala and Austin, Texas, that has a proven commitment to improving journalism in Latin America, and to use media to promote democracy, social change, and cross-cultural understanding. Since 2002, GraciasVida has conducted over a dozen journalism, ethics, and radio production training sessions for over four hundred mostly rural and indigenous journalists in Guatemala. Our recognized capacity-building experience also covers U.S. Latino communities, Mexico, Bolivia, and Uruguay.

Relief effort after Hurricane Stan

Inspired by the need to connect Guatemalan rural journalists often working in dangerous and isolated conditions, and with the help of our partner organization, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, GraciasVida initiated a list-serve for rural journalists in 2005. In October 2005, members of RadioGuate and staff of the Knight Center and GraciasVida used the list to report on efforts by Guatemalan community radio stations to document the destruction of their communities and help their audiences to obtain relief from the devastation of Hurricane Stan. RadioGuate later helped mobilize reporters living in the zone affected by Hurricane Stan to attend a training session on disaster reporting conducted by GraciasVida’s trainer, veteran public radio journalist Maria Martin.

Professional Training

In the future we will have downloadable copies of journalism manuals, professional development material on how to cover natural disasters and all other affairs of public interest. And as part of our efforts to develop training programs designed to help rural journalists improve the local standards of their profession, and contribute to bettering the quality of life in their communities we will also post a manual on how to cover elections, now that we are only nine (9) months away from the Guatemalan electoral process. Four training sessions are also being scheduled for rural Guatemalan journalists in the upcoming months, and online training programs are being developed.

Effectiveness of RadioGuate

Perhaps the best example of the practical use of this electronic network so far took place in 2006, when radio and print journalist and RadioGuate member Ángel Martín Tax of Alta Vera Paz began to receive death threats. This followed the murder of another journalist in the region. Tax immediately reported the threats to local authorities and circulated copies of those reports to members of the RadioGuate list. International attention to the case followed.
The attacks and threats provide an example of how this informal network has assumed an important role in mobilizing, and protecting colleagues.

This network has assumed an important role in mobilizing, educating and protecting fellow journalists. Now this basic project is expanding to become a multi-purpose on-line community with the use of new technologies—a project with the potential to create bridges between rural, urban and international journalists, provide forums for exchanging news and information in and out of Guatemala, and create new opportunities to improve the life of isolated rural communities.

Debating the upcoming Guatemalan electoral process

Currently the members of the RadioGuate network are discussing the forthcoming Guatemalan electoral process. To initialize the debate columns on the subject have been posted. The discussion tries to determine if the recent elections in other Latin American countries will influence the Guatemalan process and what the Guatemalan civil society should seek and demand from any presidential candidate. (In regard to real and effective public policies) At the same time issues regarding the transparency of the process, and how to cover the process will be evaluated. As always we appreciate the commentaries and participation of all the members of our network and our guests.

"Guatemala needs effective policies, more than dogmas"

We have an electoral democracy instead of a real democracy...

José Carlos Zamora

Between November 2005 and this December there were twelve presidential elections in the Latin American region. The results of the elections in Brazil, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela have modified the political map, giving it a tendency to the left.

Everybody is asking what the cause for the renaissance of these socialist movements is and in what way these new administrations with left tendencies will govern.

In regard to the way in which they will govern, we cannot do anything else than wait and see the results of the development and implementation of their public policies and hope that they are a response to the mandate the electorate has given them and the necessities of their people.

In regard to the cause of these tendency I dare to consider that even though the region has in average more than two decades in the process of democratization, until now it has only reached an electoral democracy – fact that without a doubt must be applauded, but that hasn’t been able to resolve the problems embedded in our region – like inequality, poverty, corruption, the lack of effectiveness of the law and the judicial system, and the incapability of the institutions to answer the social demands.

When going to the ballot box the electorate is not voting in favor of the ideology of the left, the right or the center. The electorate is voting desperately to emerge out of poverty, to put an end to inequality, to eradicate corruption, impunity, protectionism, privileges and organized crime, as well as to improve the quality of education, of health and of the economy through a real free market economy – open and competitive. The population is seeking anxiously a real citizen democracy in the political, economic, social and cultural fields and within the framework of rule of law in which there is transparency and clear and effective laws that apply equally to all.

Ten short months away from the presidential elections in Guatemala, these are the problems that the candidates need to address – no matter what ideology they represent – these are the problems to which they should give categorical answers. If they don’t do this, Guatemalans will keep on losing their democratic convictions.

Genuine transparency of the electoral process

Who finances the political campaigns and what are their intentions?

José Carlos Zamora

Until now the funding of political parties and their candidates has been undisclosed. This has made them susceptible to receiving funds that come from criminal activities or in the best scenario of interest groups that expect to receive something in exchange for their financial support. Issue that should concern all Guatemalans, given that the secrecy has been exploited by unscrupulous people who have led politics to being a partisan and rent seeking activity, instead of a mean to reach the common good and the public interest. Making campaign finance public is the only way we will be able to make sure that elected candidates pursue the common good and not special or personal interests.

Last week the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (SET) approved the regulation that complements the Political Parties and Electoral Law. This new regulation will allow the electoral process to be more transparent, given that it will allow the SET to control the finances of the parties, organizations and individuals who take part in the political process, making them establish clearly the origin of their sources of funding and setting limits to the donations that can be made to their campaigns.

The approval of this regulation is commendable work from part of the SET, but it should not stay in the consent of having established the new statutory system. To make this initiative a real success the SET must make sure and guarantee to make totally public and of easy access to the population all the financial information they gather about the political parties and their campaigns.

Until know the SET is on the right track, but to comply with its mandate it must receive the necessary funds to accomplish its mission. Reason why it is imperative that nine months short of the elections, Congress grants the SET its corresponding budget.

Political parties themselves, both in and out of Congress must support the efforts of the SET to make the electoral process more transparent, because by supporting this efforts they will not only be helping to strengthen our electoral system, but they will also be able to protect the integrity of their candidates and their parties.

Supporting the transparency of our electoral process and the political activity is a mechanism that the SET, Congress, the political parties and their candidates have at hand to fight abstetionism, the apathy of the electorate and achieve active citizen participation in the political process and in its scrutiny by which we will be able to achieve the establishment of a real, true and effective democracy.

"It is essential to know the plans of government in a timely manner"

Lets demand concrete policies to persecute organized crime.

José Carlos Zamora

The fact that we are only nine months away from the general elections makes urgent that the political parties and their candidates develop and make public the platforms on which they will launch their candidacies.

The necessity of preparing and making public a governmental plan is as important to the political parties and their candidates as it is to all of us who have the right and the obligation to go to the ballot boxes to cast our vote, to analyze them.

A government plan is essential for the parties and to those who plan on running for the presidency, because it allows them to develop their political strategy – both for the campaign and for their possible period of administration – and establish the public policies that they will put in place to overcome the challenges they will face if they get elected. The planning must be based on the national reality and aim to giving specific responses to the necessities of our country. When developing their strategies they must take into account that a government plan is not a political campaign and that the idea is not to offer the impossible in order to get elected, falling into demagogy, to afterwards fail trying to implement inexistent or improvised plans that only serve to mine the credibility of our institutions.

As citizens we must demand that government plans are presented to us with enough time, so that we can study, compare and discuss them. That is the only way we will be able to make an educated decision when we cast our vote, and not be forced to base our decision on empty and superficial promises that are hard to fulfill. We must also be concerned on establishing who each candidate is and on what stand each of them has in regard to all issues of national relevance. What their professional backgrounds and history is. Where the funds of their campaigns come from and which interest groups are supporting their candidacy.


In the next nine months we must demand concrete plans that define how organized crime will be fought and persecuted. How the immunity and impunity of the clandestine security forces will be finished and how they will be dismantled. How the judicial system and the adjudication of justice will be improved. How governance will be guaranteed. How the education and health system will be enhanced as well as the efficiency in collecting taxes and bringing economic development to our country.

These are only a few of the issues that need to be categorically addressed by all political parties and candidates before September 2007. If they don’t do this, they will fall once again in the pitfall of demagogy, which will result in the abstention from voting of the majority of the population. Sadly demagogy still has a chance of winning the vote of the electorate, given the necessity of the majority of having hope and of wanting to believe in empty promises, but if this happens the one and only big loser will be our country.