update...it's long

Elections are today (Sunday, May 16th). I decided to write a little about my thoughts right now, on the system here, before the results are in, and then a little more after I find out what direction my work will be headed in for the next couple months.
First, this is a democratic country. The elections this year are for 6-year positions and include things equivalent to our mayors, city councilmen, governors and senators (on both a “state” and “national” level). While the country is working hard and the actual voting part is mostly transparent and legitimate (no one knows who you vote for, you can only vote once, etc.) The “campaign” practices however flow from the normal to absurd, legal to entirely and blatantly illegal.
The normal is this: posters of the candidates plastered to electric poles, along roadsides, houses, etc. Candidates will hand out hats and t-shirts, do “cook-outs”, hand out things like medicine and food to the poor, etc. The absurd can be anything ranging from dropping salami and chickens out of helicopters, hiring trucks loaded with speakers to go around playing your jingle (you’re not a legitimate candidate if you don’t have your own jingle), and my most hated, caravans. Caravans are just that, a huge group of people who get all the trucks, cars and motorcycles they own and can hire and drive around wearing promotional shirts and waving flags. Sounds innocent enough. The problem is most of them are drunk and riotous and block main (and sometimes the only) road passageways for periods of up to an hour. Even if I supported a candidate, I would most certainly drop him after not being able to cross the street for an hour as a result of his booze-filled supporters.
The legal campaigning is basically the same as in the US, radio and TV ads that tout the candidates good qualities (although not on their platforms, more on that later). The illegal is just ridiculous. For example, the current mayor of my town told a group of poor people that receive what are basically food stamps that if they don’t vote for him he will make sure they no longer receive these food stamps. These food stamps are mostly a form of international support and therefore the local mayor’s office only distributes them, they cannot actually decide anything. People, though, believe them, and many turn in their food stamp cards if the guy loses, and the new mayor, just as horrible, collects them to give to his party members. The other tactic is buying “cedula” cards. Your “cedula” is your government ID and you need it to vote. Candidates will go out and pay people from other parties to give them their cedulas so they can’t vote the next day. This is explicitly illegal, but they do it in plain site because the people feel they can’t do anything about it and the police are just apathetic about everything.
Now, onto why the system, besides these ridiculous things, sucks in general. It is, mostly, a 3 party system. However, the parties have no ideologies, no platforms, nothing. They have colors. You like purple; you’re a part of the PLD. Or, your family is PRD, so are you. Because of this, the candidates do nothing along the lines of platforms or ideas they want to implement if they win. There are no debates. It literally is a popularity contest, which is probably not the best way to administer a government. Additionally, the government is run according the party that wins. If your party wins, you can expect a handout from the government, possibly a job. If your party loses, you can expect nothing from them, unless of course you had a job, then you can expect to lose it regardless if that means they’re hiring an illiterate farmer to run the aqueduct and you were a licensed professional.
The elections today will affect my work. A little background: the big election for me is the mayor’s race. The winner will most likely be Neno Ramirez, who is our current mayor and a total thief and scoundrel. His administration is being investigated by the federal government (this NEVER happens) for fraud, he doesn’t live here, and is basically just horrible at his job. But, his party created an alliance with another party, and since you vote for your party no matter the crappy candidate they pick, he has a huge support base. For sake of clarity, two parties (of the three) are supporting him. Then, there is Yrving Corporan. He is supported by the other party and a decent guy who I think would do a good job. He, at least, actually lives here. The third candidate is running as an independent. This independent movement is made up of all of the “head honchos” of the coffee-association I work with and the candidate is the founder of said association, Rufino Herrera. He is, in a word, amazing. And, while I have MAJOR reservations about them creating this movement and how it will, inevitably, win or lose, hurt the coffee organization, if he does win, he will make major positive change in my community. Considering people vote only for their party, it is a testament to his character (and Neno’s lack of character) that he has garnered quite a following and actually has a tiny shot of winning the election. I have a feeling, though, even as there are many people who hate Neno, this will turn into the situation the USA faced in the 2004 elections. Many people did not want to vote for Bush, but were torn between Kerry and Nader. Many people do not want to vote for Neno, and will be torn against Yrving and Rufino. This is how Neno might squeak out the win (I’d like to point out it’s very surprising that he should even be worried, having the backing of 2/3 of the political parties, it just shows how bad of a mayor he really is).
So, now I wait in my house (as it’s too dangerous to go out into the street, everyone gets drunk and angry or happy depending on the results) to find out the results and in which direction my work will go.
No big surprise, Neno won. The surprise is that he didn’t win by much. Rufino’s party gained 2 city council seats (each party gets a number of seats depending on the % of votes gained, then they pick who they want it to be). There are 5 seats, Neno’s won 2, Rufino’s 2, and Yrving’s 1, so they did well and hope to actually be able to make some change. The bad part about this is that while I want to do a library project with the mayor’s office, now the coffee association is a little bitter and might not want me working with them. Hopefully things cool down soon and I can get going on that. Since I’m not sure how that will work, my new “project” will be teaching farmers’ families how to make a family and farm budget to be able to save more consistently and know exactly where their money is going. It seems like a very simple project, but I plan on doing individual counseling to any family that wants it, so it will probably take me about a month to get through everyone.
The great news is the hospital has gone high-tech! We now have COMPUTERS in all exam rooms that will (soon) have all digital patient records. We have patient records on paper (remember all that work they did a couple months ago) and now they need to be put on the computers, but, that’s the easy part. We also have figured out how to charge the government health insurance for the people who have it, so we should be getting even more money allocated to us! The even greater part is that I really had nothing to do with any of this. Why is that great? That means that the government and hospital staff have finally picked up the slack and are working independently to move forward and when I leave there will still be progress! The saddest thing was when I went to see how things were going, some of the nurses were concerned that because they campaigned for Rufino or Yrving that they would now lose their jobs because Neno won. The Office of Public Health assured them that this wouldn’t happen as the mayor has nothing to do with their employment and I was very pleased that they (normally very political) did not use this moment to scold someone for not being a part of their party. Progress? Definitely.