Like it or not, a name is one of the first impression someone gets from you. As soon as they hear it, images spring into the mind’s eye, even before they know who you are. As if that wasn’t enough, every time your name is spoken that image is conjured again, reinforced in someone’s mind.
Take the case of the Movimimiento Libertario.
That’s not a regular party, not a mere political group organized to promote its candidates for public office. No sir. It’s a movement, an organized effort by supporters of a common goal. What’s the goal of this movement? Freedom, of course, as stated clearly by that all important libertario word.
It made you think - wow, these guys are different.
Not anymore, unfortunately. As of Saturday 25, 2005, the Movimiento went from a libertarian organization to a wholly-owned subsidiary of Otto Guevara, a political party with no other apparent purpose that getting it’s various candidates into office, faster than you can push a scientist and a fly in to a telepod and press Blend.
What will they do there? Who knows. Each candidate, many of which are not even libertarians at all, will have his own agenda. My guess is that the purpose is to elect Otto at all costs, which will not happen against Arias in the 2006 election, so the idea is to get as many yes-men as possible into Congress so that they can be blandished as negotiating weapons.
In the process, each will be free to pillage, plunder and vote for new taxes (pretty much the same thing), now that they’re free of the contract the Movimiento was supposed to bind them with.
Oh, right, I hadn’t mentioned that. Libertarian-elected congress people can now do whatever the hell they want, regardless of the promises that got them elected. Business as usual.
Leaving aside all ideological considerations, they’ve just shot themselves in the foot. The single advantage the Movimiento Libertario had over the other parties was easy to sell.
They always had the high moral ground. People knew their word was good.
That’s not true anymore. To me, they’ve demonstrated that they’re more than willing to compromise their principles for an end. They’ve lost the high moral ground. They don’t have the unions like PAC does, they don’t have the history and rabid following of PLN and PUSC. On giving that up, they’ve just become the political equivalent of the Decaffeinated Diet Coke.
No sugar, no stimulants. All cancerogenics.
If you were a libertarian, the party just screwed you. If you believed in the Movimiento’s No más de lo mismo! war cry, you better look somewhere else - they are now the same damn thing as anybody else. If you had been volunteering for them, joke’s on you.
Three strikes. I’m out.
PS: If you’re interested in more detail about what went on, instead of just my venom-spewing, you can read my friend Jorge’s take here.
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