Development: On 3 September Guatemala’s presidential spokesperson, Jorge Ortega, announced that President Otto Pérez Molina had resigned.
Significance: The announcement, which was breaking news at the time of writing, came after a local judge issued an arrest warrant for Pérez Molina following the 1 August unanimous decision by the 158-member unicameral legislature to strip him of his immunity so that he could be investigated for alleged corruption. The congressional decision was in line with a request submitted by the United Nations (UN)-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (Cicig) and the local attorney general’s office (AG), which on 21 August accused the President (along with the former vice-president, Roxana Baldetti) of heading up a criminal ring in the country’s tax agency (SAT) known as ‘La Línea’. Pérez Molina’s resignation under the weight of these corruption allegations is an unprecedented development in Guatemala and is a remarkable achievement for both the AG and the Cicig, whose mandate to investigate the infiltration of State institutions by criminal organisations was renewed for another two years in April. The resignation comes just days before the 6 September general election. While the ruling Partido Patriota (PP) already has effectively collapsed because of the corruption crisis in the government, key contenders from the main opposition parties, Libertad Democrática Renovada (Líder), and Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE), are also battling separate corruption allegations, creating a lot of uncertainty for voters.
- According to the latest reports in the local and international press, Ortega has said that Pérez Molina had sent his letter of resignation to congress, which must now formally accept or reject it. Aside from the arrest warrant issued yesterday for charges of illicit association, taking bribes and customs fraud, Pérez Molina’s decision also comes after the five-member constitutional court (CC) unanimously rejected appeals he had submitted against the move to strip him of his immunity two days earlier.
- If congress accepts the presidential resignation, Vice-President Alejandro Maldonado Aguirre will see out the rest of Pérez Molina’s four-year term, ending in January 2016. A veteran politician, diplomat and a former president of the constitutional court (CC), Maldonado was appointed in May, after Baldetti was forced to step down.
- Having lost close allies including Baldetti and the former interior minister, Mauricio López Bonilla, as well as half a dozen members of the cabinet since the release of the Cicig/AG report containing the accusations against him, Pérez Molina’s isolation was compounded by international support for the work of Cicig and the AG. In 2 September presentation, representatives from Spain’s chamber of commerce hailed the work of the two bodies. Meanwhile, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric also told reporters that the “UN Secretary General is aware of the recent accusations of corruption implicating the president of Guatemala Otto Pérez Molina and former vice president Roxana Baldetti…the Secretary General trusts that the Guatemalan institutions will act with transparency and responsibility…to offer procedural guarantees to all parties involved in these allegations”.
- On 1 September, the US ambassador to Guatemala, Todd Robinson, tweeted that “the US embassy supports protesters against corruption and impunity and in favour of transparency” – a reference to the anti-government protests which have been taking place on a weekly basis since April – when the SAT scandal first broke.
Looking Ahead: Pérez Molina looks set to become the third Guatemalan leader to be brought before the courts in recent years. In 2011, Alfonso Portillo (2000-2004), of the now defunct Frente Republicano Guatemalteco, was acquitted of embezzlement by a local court; he was subsequently extradited to the US, where he was convicted of money laundering charges in 2014. In May 2013, Guatemala’s former dictator, Efrain Ríos Montt (1982-1983), was convicted in Guatemala of genocide and crimes against humanity committed by the State during the 1960-1996 civil war, but that ruling was overturned days later.
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