Presidencia El Salvador
Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales.
Guatemala is facing an intense political crisis. On August 31, Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales, surrounded by more than sixty military and police officials, announced his intention to shut down the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, commonly referred to as CICIG.
An anti-corruption body funded by the United Nations and United States, the CICIG has made important headways against corruption in the small Central American country since its founding in 2006. But now Morales, a subject of the commission‘s inquiries, has given the commission one year to transfer its work to the Guatemalan Public Prosecutor’s office.
In his speech, Morales accused the CICIG of “selective criminal persecution with an evident ideological bias” and of setting out to “terror” Guatemalans. Yet this contradicts the support among Guatemalans for the anti-corruption commission—a Prensa Libre poll taken in 2015 found that 95 percent of those polled approved of its efforts.
CICIG gained international notoriety in April 2015 with the uncovering of a graft to the country’s customs tax system orchestrated by the President Pérez Molina that defrauded the state of $120 million dollars. Protests began shortly after the announcement of the case, and quickly escalated into national outrage, which led to the resignation of nearly every minister in the Guatemalan government. Molina and his vice president, Roxana Baldetti, both resigned and are currently incarcerated, facing charges for corruption.
Morales accused the CICIG of ‘selective criminal persecution with an evident ideological bias’ and of setting out to ‘terror’ Guatemalans—yet this contradicts support among Guatemalans for the commission.
Morales had promised voters during the 2015 election that he was “not corrupt or a thief” — “Ni corupto ni ladron.” Yet just like the Trump Administration, the Morales administration has faced near-constant scandal and protest.
The CICIG and the Public Prosecutor’s office have opened numerous investigations into Morales and his family, including attempts to impeach him over illicit financing of his 2015 presidential campaign. Shortly before Morales’ announcement, the Guatemalan Constitutional Court asked to the congress to consider removing Morales’ immunity, which by law extends to all Guatemalan elected officials while in office.
“This clearly is a vendetta with the CICIG,” Iduvina Hernández, the director of human rights organization Security in Democracy tells The Progressive. “[Morales’] son and brother are in judicial process for acts of corruption, and Morales is facing two cases for investigations for illicit financing, and a possible third investigation.”
All signs suggest that Guatemala’s constitutional crisis is worsening.
On September 4, Morales ordered the Institute of Migration to prevent Ivan Velásquez, a Colombian judge who has led the anti-corruption body since 2013, from reentering the country following his trip to the United States. Morales and his government said they were acting in response to “attempt against public order and security.”
Hernández scoffs at this. “The only threats to national security in this moment are the arbitrary and authoritarian actions of the president of the republic, and the circle of military and police that surround him,” she says.
U.S. Congressmen Eliot L. Engel, Democrat of New York, and Albio Sires, Democrat of New Jersey, support this perspective. The two issued a joint statement condemning the Guatemalan government after the announcement that it was barring Velásquez.
In the hours prior to Morales’s announcement, a caravan of heavily armed J8 military jeeps were spotted circling the offices of CICIG in Zona 14 of Guatemala City. This act, launched by minister of the interior, is widely viewed as a form of intimidation against the commission.
The military jeeps were a few of 148 jeeps donated by the United States for border security operations as part of the bi-national and tri-national inter-agency task forces that were formed with assistance from the United States. The U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City issued a statement expressing concern over the misuse of the vehicles.
‘The only threats to national security in this moment are the arbitrary and authoritarian actions of the president of the republic.’
As condemnation came in from across the globe, including from the European Union and U.S. Democrats including former Vice President Joseph Biden and Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted his appreciation for the efforts of the Guatemalan government to improve security and combat drug trafficking.
In a press statement, Leahy’s office said U.S. Congress will “reassess the eligibility of the Guatemalan Government, and of the military, for any further assistance under the Alliance for Prosperity,” a reference to the United States’ program to bring stability to the Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
Morales’s moves have also received widespread condemnation from organizations from civil society, including the Indigenous Ancestral Authorities, campesino organizations, and activists that were active in 2015 in the mobilizations against President Otto Pérez Molina. And they are being denounced by ordinary Guatemalans, who see them as bringing increased insecurity and political instability.
“What a stupid decision Morales has made,” Luis, a store clerk in San Juan Comalapa, Chimaltenango who withheld his last name, tells The Progressive. “Now Guatemala will be worse. He only did it because he will be out of office in a year and he needed to cover his back so they don’t investigate him.”
Supporters of the administration, especially on the far right, have long called for Morales to take action against the CICIG. In August 2017, Morales attempted to expel Velásquez by declaring him “persona non-grata.” Yet the Guatemalan courts blocked this attempt.
Within hours of Morales’s August 31 announcement, activists mobilized protests in the central plaza of Guatemala City. More than one thousand people turned out after work to protest Morales, declaring they “had no president” and setting fire to a piñata bearing the his likeness.
While Hernández says the advances of the struggle against corruption are “not irreversible,” she worries that the end of the commission means “we are opening the door to the a new corrupt and criminal powers to enter the state.”