The democratic system navigates troubled waters in Guatemala

First modification: 06/24/2023 – 18:10

In the last three governments, “the spaces for democracy” have been reduced and “authoritarian-type measures have been introduced to control the country,” Bernardo Arévalo, presidential candidate for a center-left minority party, told AFP. The son of the reformist president Juan José Arévalo (1945-1951) blames this on the right-wing governments of Otto Pérez (2012-2015), Jimmy Morales (2016-2020) and Alejandro Giammattei, whose term ends in January 2024.

He says that the resurgence of authoritarianism was a reaction of powerful political and business sectors to the work of the Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), an entity endorsed by the UN that helped uncover high-profile cases of corruption, between 2007 and 2019. CICIG was born under the right-wing government of Óscar Berger (2004-2008) and continued with the social democrat Álvaro Colom (2008-2012). His investigations led in 2015 to resign Pérez, convicted of customs fraud.

But his successor, Morales, ended CICIG in 2019, and Giammattei made no attempt to revive it. In addition, Giammattei has kept the questioned national prosecutor, Consuelo Porras, who launched a campaign of persecution against former anti-corruption prosecutors and CICIG officials.

– “He unified the corrupt” –

Eight former prosecutors have been arrested and another 30 have gone into exile, according to Human Rights Watch. Washington included Porras in 2021 on its list of “corrupt actors.” “CICIG had the virtue of revealing and laying bare a system of corruption that we all knew existed. The problem is that it was so efficient that it ended up unifying the corrupt,” says Arévalo.

The groups that had lost out to the CICIG investigations “came back stronger,” says Edie Cux, director of the local chapter of the NGO Transparency International. “A regime is being consolidated, not a traditional dictatorship, but a corporate dictatorship, which is much more dangerous because there is no visible figure,” Cux told AFP.

A demonstration that ended with a fire in the Congress building, on November 21, 2020, left dozens of people injured and detained. Since then there have been no mass protests against Giammattei, for fear of police repression, according to analysts.

– ‘Technical coup’ –

The 13 justices of the Supreme Court ended their terms three years ago, but remain in office on technicalities. Their rulings often favor the government. “From my point of view it was a technical coup, because democracy and a fundamental pillar of democracy were broken,” former judge Miguel Ángel Gálvez, exiled in Costa Rica, told AFP.

“The situation is deteriorating in the judicial system, at the service of the corrupt oligarchic and political power of Guatemala, which is reflected in dozens of resolutions that favor those prosecuted and convicted of acts of grand corruption,” the former head of the Prosecutor against Impunity, Juan Francisco Sandoval, exiled in the United States. “The weakening of judicial independence in Guatemala, along with corruption […] It has left justice operators in a vulnerable situation,” Gisela de León, legal director of the NGO Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), told AFP.

– “Rewind” –

Two weeks ago, the owner of a newspaper critical of the government, José Rubén Zamora, was sentenced to six years in prison for money laundering, in a trial denounced by the Inter-American Press Association (SIP). His newspaper, founded in 1996, ceased publication on May 15. The head of US diplomacy for Latin America, Brian Nichols, described the sentence as a “threat to independent journalism and freedom of expression in Guatemala.”

“The spiral of repression against the press and the increase in attacks against journalists in Guatemala are a symptom of democratic setbacks,” said Artur Romeu, director of Reporters Without Borders in Latin America, presenting a report on Guatemala. The ongoing electoral process is also being questioned due to the marginalization of two candidates with options: right-wing businessman Carlos Pineda and left-wing indigenous Thelma Cabrera.

Although the favorite candidates speak of “profound reforms and transformations”, nothing will change after the elections, despite the fact that Guatemalans ask for a “stop to the pile of excesses that are now seen in terms of corruption, impunity, persecution and criminalization of a wide range number of actors, ranging from justice operators to human rights defenders, journalists, etc.,” political analyst Renzo Rosal told AFP.

Despite all the questioning, Giammattei affirmed on Friday that Guatemala has “a solid democracy.” This Sunday, some 9.4 million Guatemalans are empowered to elect Giammattei’s successor. The former Social Democratic first lady Sandra Torres leads the intention to vote (21.3%), followed by the former centrist diplomat Edmond Mulet (13.4%), according to the latest survey by the ProDatos firm. In third place (9.1%) is the right-wing Zury Ríos and fourth is the official Manuel Conde (5.8%).