Hundreds gathered outside Guatemala’s supreme court on September 18 in a show of support for Guatemala’s new president-elect Bernardo Arévalo, as he and his party filed an official request for the prosecution of María Consuelo Porras, the country’s attorney general. The attempt to impeach the embattled attorney general comes after she and her office have sought to intervene in the electoral process through seeking to investigate and suspend the Movimiento Semilla Party.
Jeff Abbott
Guatemala’s president-elect Bernardo Arévalo of the Movimiento Semilla Party addresses the press on July 12, 2023.
There have been deep seated concerns within Guatemala and coming from the international community regarding Guatemala’s presidential transition since the August 20 run-off election, which resulted in the progressive anti-corruption candidate’s historic victory. The worries stem from the continual interference in the electoral process by the country’s Public Prosecutor’s office, leading Arévalo and his Movimiento Semilla Party to officially suspend the transition process on September 12.
The concerns and the decision to suspend the transition process followed illegal raids by investigators from the Public Prosecutor’s office—supported by heavily armed security—of Guatemala’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal, as well as the Citizens’ Registry, and the facility housing the boxes containing ballots from both the June 25 and the August 20 elections. In a surprise escalation, investigators forcibly opened the ballot boxes in direct violation of the country’s electoral law.
The move is being seen by Renzo Rosal, a Guatemalan independent political analyst, as a show of force by the embattled attorney general.
“It is clearly illegal,” Rosal tells The Progressive. “They know it's illegal, everyone knows it's illegal, but just saying it's illegal doesn't matter [to them]. They did what they did last week, they could do it today, they could do it tomorrow and there is no one who can oppose them.”
On September 18, Luis Almagro, general secretary of the Organization of American States (OAS), condemned the actions of Porras in a meeting of the permanent council. He denounced the fact that the Public Prosecutor’s office had lied to him about the details surrounding the investigation into Movimiento Semilla, and called on the council to cease the political persecution of the president-elect’s party.
“The situations of intimidation and the actions against the political system, against the Movimiento Semilla Party, must stop,” Almagro said during the meeting. “We cannot allow a prosecutor's office without competence in electoral issues to break anything; and even less to break the institutions and the constitution of the country.”
“The situations of intimidation and the actions against the political system, against the Movimiento Semilla Party, must stop.”—Luis Almagro, OAS
He ended by saying, “After October 31 [which marks the end of Guatemala’s electoral cycle], justice cannot be used as an electoral tool.”
Almagro and the OAS had launched an observation commission to Guatemala to assist in the now suspended transitional process.
But the OAS is not the only body that has condemned the attorney general’s actions.
Days earlier on September 14, the Parliament of the European Union approved a resolution condemning the intervention and raid by the Public Prosecutor’s office. decision, and the nation of France urged Guatemalan authorities to respect the results of the June 25 general election and the August 20 run-off.
Officials from the Biden Administration in the United States have made numerous statements calling on Guatemala’s ruling party and the prosecutor's office to respect the results of the election. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken previously expressed concerns with the attacks against the electoral process by Porras and Rafael Curruchiche, the head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity, following the run-off.
“The United States remains concerned with continued actions by those who seek to undermine Guatemala’s democracy,”—U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken
“The United States remains concerned with continued actions by those who seek to undermine Guatemala’s democracy,” Blinken said in a statement on Aug. 29. “Such anti-democratic behavior, including efforts by the Public Ministry and other actors to suspend the president-elect’s political party and intimidate election authorities, undercuts the clear will of the Guatemalan people and is inconsistent with the principles of the Inter-American Democratic Charter.”
Faced with the criticisms, Porras and the Public Prosecutor’s office sent a letter to the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee condemning “the repeated unfounded and ill-intentioned accusations” from the United States Department of State and other International observers. Porras and her office have repeatedly tried to argue that they are not political, in spite of their consistent violation of Guatemala’s legal code.
Porras was re-appointed as Attorney General in May 2022, in spite of irregularities and protests. Both Porras and Guatemala prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche, as well as Fredy Orellana, the judge who ordered the raid, and prosecutor Cinthia Monterroso who was pictured being protected by heavily armed individuals while entering the dure raid of the facility holding the ballot boxes. All four are sanctioned by the U.S. State Department under the Engel List of corrupt and anti-democratic actors.
Judge Orellana, who presides over the Seventh Criminal Court, had previously issued orders to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and the Citizens’ Registry to suspend the Movimiento Semilla Party. That order was eventually annulled by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, but the issuance of the order is being considered illegal and an intervention in the electoral process—which officially ends on October 31—by a lower court that has no involvement in the electoral process.
“The suspension was not based on the legally established procedure and for the causes established in the electoral law and the political party, therefore it is an arbitrary and illegal resolution,” Juan Gerardo Guerrero, the lead attorney for Movimiento Semilla, tells The Progressive.
Fernando Reyes Palencia from Guatemala, Guatemala CC BY-SA 2.0
Supreme Court building in Guatemala City, Guatemala, 2011.
“There is a fraud on the part of Judge Orellana because he maliciously applied the ‘Law against Organized Crime’ and the ‘Law on Money Laundering’ to order the director of the Citizens’ Registry and to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to suspend the party,” Guerrero says. “Orellana not only does not have the jurisdiction to hear the matter, but he is maliciously applying two laws that are not applicable in electoral matters.”
Guatemala’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, recognized an injunction filed by Guerrero and Movimiento Semilla against Porras, Curruchiche, and Orellana. But the court transferred the injunction to Guatemala’s Supreme Court for the ruling.
The illegalities carried out by the Public Prosecutor’s office in response to president-elect Arévalo and his Movimiento Semilla Party’s victory expanded beyond just seeking to intervene in the electoral process.
According to the Guatemalan independent media outlet Prensa Comunitaria, investigators from the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity have opened an investigation into Guerrero as part of the investigations into the formation of the Movimiento Semilla Party. The investigation proceeded in spite of Guerrero benefiting from immunity due to serving in the Central American Parliament since 2019.
In Guatemala, all elected and appointed officials benefit from a blanket immunity from investigation, which can be stripped if approved by the country’s Supreme Court and Congress. Guatemalan presidents and politicians have been stripped of their immunity in the past. In September 2015 ex-president Otto Pérez Molina was stripped of his immunity during the investigation into graft during his administration. Pérez Molina was forced to resign the presidency on September 2, 2015, and was eventually convicted of acts of corruption in 2022.
The benefit of immunity has been used by politicians accused of corruption as a means of escaping pending charges.
This benefit of immunity has been used by politicians accused of corruption as a means of escaping pending charges. In 2020, ex-Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales quickly sought to enter the Central American Parliament after his presidency in order to maintain immunity from investigation. At the time he was facing investigations into corruption and his part in the deaths of forty-one young girls in a fire inside a government safehouse. Morales had faced multiple attempts to impeach him and strip him of his immunity during his four years in office.
It is likely that the attacks against the incoming government will escalate after October 31, when the electoral process officially ends.
“The [Public Ministry (MP)] is keeping the thermostat hot,” Rosal says. “But we will have to wait for what happens in Guatemala [in] November, after the electoral process ends. I think the MP will take stronger actions [against Movimiento Semilla].”
Other politicians associated with what Guatemalans have dubbed “the corruption pact” have also sought to further roll back Guatemala’s anti-corruption and anti-impunity efforts as the country nears the transition of power. With just months left in their terms, politicians in Guatemala’s congress have pushed forward multiple pieces of new legislation that seek to maintain impunity, including approving a blanket amnesty for military leaders accused of committing war crimes during the country’s thirty-six-year-long internal armed conflict and seeking to approve legislation to protect the intellectual property rights of international seed producers, such as Monsanto, which many farmers fear plans to privatize their seeds.
“Many of these initiatives have not managed to move forward now in the final stretch of this legislature,” Rosal says. “They do not have the votes.”
But he points out that the initiatives will likely return in the next congress, and the legislature will likely use these types of laws to hold back the Arévalo administration from accomplishing its platform of reforms.
“These will be taken up again in the next legislature,” Rosal says. “In the next legislature it could gain a lot of strength thinking precisely about undermining or by reducing room for the new government to maneuver.”
He says, “It is the same demonstration that the MP is making. Congress could do it, saying to the executive branch, ‘you can do what you want, but the real power in this country is in the congress.’ ”