Guatemalan president plans to distribute smartphones to poor children
GUATEMALA (Reuters) — Basking in the glory of a landslide in Guatemala’s presidential election, former comedian with no government experience Jimmy Morales has some unorthodox policy plans, including giving poor kids smartphones.
Morales, 46, who sailed to victory with 67.5 percent of the vote on an anti-corruption platform, has said little about how he would curb gang violence or stem the flow of migrants to the United States, leaving a cloud of uncertainty over key issues.
“No other candidate has been called everything from a clown to a populist, but the smartphone is the least populist [idea] that there is,” Morales said in an interview, a day after his massive win. He will take office in January.
He plans to start with a pilot program in schools in 45 of Guatemala’s municipalities, and said it would cost the government nothing.
“We are going to give [the telephone companies] school and government walls to paint their brand logos on to compensate them,” he said, adding that he has been in contact with some of the country’s largest telecom operators.
He’s also been reported to have plans to tag teachers with GPS trackers to ensure class attendance, but no details of that policy or of a pressing problem with teacher absenteeism were readily available.
Morales rode a wave of voter outrage over a graft scandal that toppled former President Otto Perez Molina last month, making the fight against corruption his central pledge and playing up his status as a political outsider.
But critics have called some of his policies eccentric and said his ideas on how to deal with some of Guatemala’s major challenges, such as violence and undocumented migration, are vague at best.