First modification:
This June 25, Guatemala is holding elections, but it is doing so at a time of special risk for democracy, according to various international organizations. That threat comes from the structural corruption that seems to affect the political, business and military elites. A problem that is not new, since it dates from the civil war that hit the country, but which has worsened after the departure of Cicig in 2019.
This June 25 Guatemala celebrates presidential elections. An outstanding date on the political calendar that, however, generates disinterest and disaffection among a good part of Guatemalans. The main reason is the relationship that the political class of this country has had with corruption. A systemic problem that threatens to undermine democracy and that, although attempts were made to combat it between 2006 and 2019 with the creation of the Cicig, endorsed by the United Nations, after its end, impunity has become more dangerous. But you cannot understand the context of Guatemala without knowing its history.
This country suffered a bloody civil war between 1960 and 1996 that pitted the military and the State against various subversive guerrillas of a Marxist nature. This conflict left around 200,000 dead, according to the Commission for Historical Clarification, and allowed the military caste to rule for decades with an iron fist, committing human rights violations with great impunity. The end of this period laid the foundations of current democracy after the 1996 peace signing in Madrid, Spain, between the two parties.
However, in the years following the agreement, Guatemala emerged as a nation with difficulties in guaranteeing the rights of a full democracy. The main reason was that, given the dismantling that the State had suffered in previous decades, various political, economic and military elites began to co-opt the institutions to profit from them. A situation that forced former President Óscar Berger to ask the United Nations for help in 2006 to combat corrupt structures: this is how the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, also known as Cicig, was born.
La Cicig, a UN mission that sought to end corruption in Guatemala
This organization was, therefore, an entity that did not belong to the Guatemalan State, but whose purpose was to reform the Guatemalan judicial system and rely on it to combat corruption. Its success was more than remarkable, especially from 2013, when the Colombian lawyer Iván Velásquez became president of this organization.
Velásquez began to investigate and prosecute the macro-structures of corruption and discovered, along with his team, a web of bribery and illegal financing that affected even the highest levels of the State, including former Vice President Roxana Baldetti and former President Otto Pérez Molina. Both were forced to resign in 2015 after it was proven that they paid bonuses to congressmen to maintain voting discipline. Both were tried and convicted. Something considered historic for Guatemala.
Under the support of Cicig, this nation It came to be considered a global example in the fight against corruption and transparency. Citizens began to demand political changes and responsibility in the streets. So many of the traditional parties and figures disappeared. The Cicig investigations affected mayors, businessmen, the military, judges and ministers. A success that would begin to annoy the Guatemalan elites, who, although at first they did not see this organization as dangerous, eventually found themselves threatened. This is how Velásquez spoke about this circumstance in 2017.
When the task is assumed independently, rigorously, and responsibly, one of the foreseeable is that the affected sectors will react in the way they have been doing in Guatemala.
In this climate of political change, Jimmy Morales was elected president, a figure who was in favor of continuing to collaborate with Cicig and who made anti-corruption discourse his banner. But everything changed when Velásquez and his investigations splashed Morales’s son and brother and, later, the former president himself for illegal financing of his campaign. Morales prohibited Velásquez from entering the country and blocked all investigations first and in September 2019 decided not to renew the mandate of the Commission with the following words:
The Cicig has put the public security and governability of the country at risk, especially due to the actions of Mr. Iván Velásquez Gómez, whom the Government of Guatemala disavowed as commissioner on the recommendation of the National Security Council.
Complaints of impunity have multiplied after the departure of the Cicig
From that moment on, the structures in charge of investigating impunity were dismantled and those who denounced it were persecuted. After Morales, Alejandro Giammattei came to office, a figure who had previously been designated by Cicig and who also rejected his return.
In fact, several organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, affirm that Giammattei, together with his attorney general, Consuelo Porras, has orchestrated a persecution against officials and journalists who denounce corruption. Among them stands out the journalist José Zamora, who uncovered corruption schemes in the high expectations that splashed Giammattei. This last week, Zamora was sentenced to six years in prison in the middle of a disputed judicial process.
In this context, the 2023 elections are reached, where two progressive candidates critical of the system have been vetoed and the three favorites to win —Zury Ríos, Edmond Mulet and Sandra Ríos— have rejected the return of Cicig and aspire to a model of Government with similarities to that of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, as confirmed in their respective campaigns.
