They are doing everything they can to have more sympathizers. The publicity is everywhere and it has become a little overwhelming. Posters, flags, songs, stickers, banners, billboards, faces and symbols everywhere you turn, not only for presidential candidates, but also for the vice presidents, congressman and city mayors. Just to give you an example: we have 14 people running for the presidency, so you can imagine all the different things we see and hear every day. It is a good thing that Election Day is coming soon because I think I can’t handle any more of all this political madness.

Why are so many people undecided? Well, I suppose it’s because they feel that none of the candidates are good enough or simply because some people have lost faith in the democratic system. Many people are saying that they are not going to vote because the election is already given, like a bad omen, so... why going through all the trouble of voting if it’s not going to make any difference?

And yet others are undecided because they are not satisfied with the candidates for other reasons. And I don’t blame them. I had the opportunity of seeing most of the candidates at a political forum and I didn’t get a good impression. For me, it’s hard to believe that some of the candidates that had been very much involved in politics for a very long time don’t even know the difference between a democracy and a republic. It’s really horrible. And some of them don’t seem to be very worried about the facts but only in saying and promising what people want to hear, like good populists.

Sadly, this is not a weird situation because we are used to have paternalist governments in which the president is a role model, the hero that is going to solve all our problems. We ask them to do miracles and to end with poverty, to give us jobs, a good health plan, education, security, and so on and on, like an endless list to Santa.

Why do we expect them to be super heroes, gods from the Greek mythology, perfect in every way? That’s the reason why we still hope and wait for the “political messiah”. That perfect person that is going to save and give us everything we need and want. And some say we don’t have fantasies and dreams anymore, ha! It’s a bad thing to expect that kind of perfection in an ordinary mortal, so when things go bad, there comes the disappointment and the excuses: “But he didn’t look that bad, but he promised us …, but …”

So we have to be very careful and chose well next Sunday. I only hope that it will not be like the last Peruvian election in which the citizens had to choose between the devil and his cousin. Luckily for them the cousin won. The Bolivians and Ecuadoreans didn’t have that luck and now they are suffering the results of that. They are perfect examples of how the enemies of freedom are not well aware of the economic consequences of their populist policies.

We have to resist the temptation of being seduced with false promises. And I know this is hard because who doesn’t like being wooed with nice gifts? The free t-shirts, the baseball caps, the stickers, the pins and even fruit juice at every traffic light. I have to confess that I even like one of the thousand songs. All of this can be appealing, but what we really need is someone who can and will defend our individual rights no matter what. Someone who respects us enough to allow us take our own decisions. We are born free so we can do whatever we want with our life and be responsible for our actions. No one knows what is goog for us better than ourselves. Certainly a bureaucrat sitting at a nice desk is not going to know better what we want and need. These enlightened men with their paternalist economic and political policies treat us like kids who can't care for themselves without government help and they forget that we are fully capable of taking our own decisions and being responsible for them. And the result is the limitation of our individual liberty, the limitation to the notion that each of us should be free to live our own lives as we see fit as long as we respect the equal rights of others.

My fear is that at the end it is going to be a popularity contest between the two favorites and not between the most qualified. For example, a couple of weeks ago in the Latinamerican Idol show Saúl, one of the best singers, got kicked out because he didn’t get enough votes. For me that was very disappointing since some of the kids that are still on the show are not that good. So, that is the cruel reality in a popularity contest: sometimes it is not the best who wins but the one with the most votes. And I know that it is a bad comparison because a pop idol is not the same as a president but lets face it, popularity is a big deal in politics. The bad side of all this is that we the citizens are the ones that will pay the cost of that emotional vote.

Next Sunday don’t look for Superman or Prince Charming in the ballots. What we need is a skillful person willing to do the job in the correct way, by the law and with the attributions and limits that the Constitution establishes. Someone that is willing to protect the life, liberty, and property of each individual. We have to be responsible with our vote and not forget that for better or worse we will be tied to this person for the next four years. And if you really don’t like any of the political offers, don’t despair, Guatemala is going to keep growing as it has been doing despite of the current politicians.

* Lilian Yon B. is a lawyer graduated from Francisco Marroquin University (Guatemala). Member of the Liberty Foundation (Panama) and the Libertarian Institute (Costa Rica).

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