They thoroughly embrace the astounding atrocities perpetrated on the poor of Latin America by right-wing American pResidents.
Mr. R� Montt, who is under house arrest pending trial on charges of organizing a political riot last summer, remains a major political figure in Guatemala. His daughter has for years been one of his principal advisers and strategists.
Because Mr. Weller is a member of the House Committee on International Relations and sits on its Western Hemisphere subcommittee, his newly announced tie to one of Guatemala's most notorious political figures has added spice to his re-election campaign. His opponent, Tari Renner, a political science professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, has made it a campaign issue.
"At the very least, Weller needs to repudiate the R� Montt regime and his party, and also resign from the international relations committee," Mr. Renner said. "This is not about private life. It's a matter that could affect not just policy, but national security. National security is not a personal issue. Genocide is not a personal issue."
Guatemalan news organizations pressed Mr. Renner for interviews on Friday, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington went on the attack. The committee's press secretary, Greg Speed, said in a statement that "Congressman Weller has a clear conflict of interest serving on the committee that sets American policy for Central America while he's marrying into the family of a Guatemalan dictator."
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http://www.dccc.org/stakeholder/archives/000570.html
Weller, the little Mrs., and Weller's genocidal dictator right-wing father-in-lawIllinois Republican Jerry Weller is one of the most powerful men in Congress when it comes to Latin America. His wife is the most powerful woman in Guatemala’s controversial FRG party.
By Frank Smyth
August 25, 2006
JERRY WELLER WAS running for his sixth term as congressman from Illinois’ 11th District in July 2004 when he announced that he was engaged to Zury Rios Sosa, an outspoken third-term legislator in Guatemala’s congress and the daughter of former dictator General Efrain Rios Montt. “I am thrilled to have found my best friend and soulmate,” Weller stated in a press release. “Our love knows no boundaries.” In the same release Sosa said, “With Jerry, I am starting an eternal springtime. I admire his character, his commitment to his responsibilities, and his honesty.”
Their mutual admiration notwithstanding, the announcement raised a red flag. Weller, who would be the first congressman ever to marry a member of a foreign national legislature, sat on the International Relations Committee and its western hemisphere subcommittee--would his votes be influenced by Sosa?
In a July 12 editorial the Chicago Sun-Times said, “The problem is the image it conveys to our Latin American neighbors, who are critical enough of our policies without concerns about how a vote might have been influenced by a committee member’s wife.” The following day the Bloomington Pantagraph, the biggest paper in Weller’s district, ran an editorial that said, “Any time an elected U.S. representative privy to confidential information is intimately involved with a central figure in a foreign government--and one whose father has been accused of genocide within that country--there should be concern. . . . There are some boundaries that elected representatives have to draw in the name of U.S. security. We can’t say Weller has crossed that line, but he’s sure tiptoeing down it.”
(snip/...)
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/jerryweller/
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