Reply #10: Thanks for highlighting Alvaro Colom. We definitely need to know far more about the guy. [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Godfatherbrief look from google. He doesn't sound like a candidate of the people, by any means!

~snip~
Alvaro Colom, the self-proclaimed “godfather of the factories” in Guatemala, is founder and president of the National Commission of Industries as well as president of two major industrial companies. Colom’s experience as director of the National Fund for Peace from 1991 to 1997 and role as negotiator in the return of thousands of Guatemalan refugees earned him the presidential nomination of a coalition of leftist parties in the 1999 elections, in which he finished third. During the current elections, Colom succeeded in attracting supporters from both sides of the political spectrum to his newly created party, the National Union of Hope, by playing on both his conservative economic beliefs and his slightly leftist discourse.

To their credit, the business and political careers of both Colom and Berger are distinguished by the absences of major corruption scandals. But given the structure of politics in Guatemala, both parties were strongly tempted to pact with the military, organized crime, and the still powerful FRG congressional block to tilt the balance of power in their favor in the tightly contested run-off elections.
(snip)

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Feb2004/kraft0204.html

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Guatemala is very important. Our own ignorance nationally of the countries our right-wing Presidents were bullying and devastating has kept nearly everyone in the dark at the time these atrocities were going on, to the point so many of us only found out decades after the fact.

We can't afford, spiritually, to bealignedd with suppression and violence against the citizens of ANY of these countries who have NEVER been a threat to even one of us. It has never been a case of national defense, but rather a case of unbelievable racism, inexcusable meddling and barbarity conducted in secrecy because the right-wing Presidents KNEW what they were doing was profoundly WRONG.

No wonder Reagan lost his memory. His conscience finally shorted out!

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Thanks so much for refreshing our memories, in some cases, of whom Alvaro Colom is. This is a very important election staring at us from the near future, and deadly important for the people of Guatemala.