Guatemala: Constitutional Standoff Threatens Central America's Largest Economy
A constitutional standoff between the Guatemalan president and a United Nations-led commission prosecuting corruption is triggering a crisis that Guatemala’s Central Bank acknowledges may damage the country’s economy, and spawn more illegal migration to the United States. Guatemalans in Vermont are among many within the Guatemalan diaspora in the United States who are dismayed by an attack on political reform, but buoyed by the response of thousands of their countrymen and women inside Guatemala.
In 2007, the U.N. helped establish the International Commission Against Impunity In Guatemala, known by its Spanish acronym, CICIG. The commission’s mandate is the targeting and prosecution of deep-rooted corruption, a corrosive force in Guatemala’s politics, economy and judicial system for generations. CICIG’s investigations helped force the resignation of a sitting Guatemalan president, Otto Pérez Molina, in 2015. He is currently in jail awaiting trial while his case proceeds after CICIG charged him and his former vice president Roxana Baldetti in a corruption case. The case is known as La Línea, or the Line, in which the Guatemalan customs agency offered companies bringing goods into Guatemala reduced import duties in return for money that was shared among dozens of government officials.
Two years later, Pérez Molina’s successor, a political newcomer and former television comedian Jimmy Morales, is embroiled in a new CICIG probe. He is being investigated by CICIG regarding links to allegedly illegal campaign funds received by his political party the National Convergence Front (FCN) during the 2015 election. Morales won the presidency by leveraging voter disdain for Pérez Molina. Morales’ campaign slogan, “neither corrupt nor a thief,” – “ni corrupto, ni ladrón” – struck a chord given his overwhelming margin of victory.
In late August, two days after CICIG’s chief prosecutor publicly revealed that Morales’ funding was under review, Morales declared the U.N.’s lead prosecutor in Guatemala, Colombian jurist Iván Velásquez, persona non grata, ordering Velásquez to leave the country. Although the expulsion order was swiftly blocked by the Guatemalan courts, Morales’ announcement spawned a series of street protests and revulsion by many Guatemalans abroad. The U.S., Canada and the European Union expressed disdain for the attempt to stymie Velásquez’ work.
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