"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.