Tag Archives: LIDER

Polls give Morales a lock on Guatemala’s presidential runoff

Jimmy Morales, a former comic actor and a populist, anti-corruption candidate, should easily become Guatemala's next president. (Facebook)
Jimmy Morales, a former comic actor and a populist, anti-corruption candidate, should easily become Guatemala’s next president. (Facebook)

He is in many ways an accidental man of the moment, the man standing on stage who can most credibly claim, as his slogan goes, that he is ni corrupto ni ladrón — ‘neither corrupt nor a thief.’guatemala flag icon

Jimmy Morales, the 46-year-old former comedian, who just a few years ago graced shampoo bottles across Guatemala in an afro wig and blackface, is now the overwhelming favorite to win the country’s presidential runoff on Sunday, October 25, with one recent poll for the Prensa Libre giving him 67.9% of the vote to just 32.1% for the former first lady, center-left Sandra Torres. Other polls show similar gaps in Morales’s favor.

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RELATED: Torres edges Baldizón into Guatemalan runoff with Morales

RELATED: The contour of Guatemala’s new Congress is very conservative

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Barring a complete change of heart, Morales will become Guatemala’s next president.

So who is he and what does he believe? How did a comic actor wind up leading Central America’s largest economy? Most importantly, what will his election mean for Guatemala’s future? Continue reading Polls give Morales a lock on Guatemala’s presidential runoff

The contour of Guatemala’s new Congress? Very conservative.

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Even before the final, official vote count is announced in Guatemala’s presidential election, we already know the results of the other major election that took place on September 6  — for the 158 members of the Guatemala Congreso.guatemala flag icon

Notwithstanding the triumph of comedian and anti-politician Jimmy Morales in the first round of the presidential election, if Morales wins the scheduled October 25 runoff, he will face an immediately hostile and divided Congress.

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RELATED: Torres edges Baldizón into Guatemalan runoff with Morales

RELATED: Guatemala lifts Pérez Molina’s immunity six days before vote to replace him

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Though social democratic candidate and former first lady Sandra Torres appears to have bested conservative candidate Manuel Baldizón, a wealthy businessman and the 2011 presidential runner-up, it’s Baldizón’s party, Libertad Democrática Renovada (LIDER, Renewed Democratic Liberty), that won the greatest number of seats in the Congress.

Though LIDER won just 19% of the vote nationwide, it is entitled to 44 seats, making it the largest party in the next Guatemalan Congress. Moreover, despite the resignation and arrest of president Otto Pérez Molina just days before the election, his conservative Partido Patriota (PP, Patriotic Party), which has often partnered with LIDER over the Pérez Molina administration’s past four years, won about 9.5% of the vote and another 17 seats.

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The Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE, National Unity of Hope), a party founded by Torres’s husband — technically former husband –Álvaro Colom, who preceded Pérez Molina as president, won nearly 15% of the vote, entitling it to the second-largest bloc of seats with 36. Todos, a centrist splinter group from the UNE founded three years ago by Felipe Alejos, won 16 seats in the Congress.

Morales’s own movement, the nationalist Frente de Convergencia Nacional (FCN, National Convergence Front), won just 11 seats and, nationally, just 8.76% of the parliamentary vote.

No other party managed to win more than seven seats in the Congress, though the Encuentro por Guatemala, a leftist party formed by Rigoberta Menchú, the K’iche’ Mayan activist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, to defend the interests of Guatemala’s indigenous population (and sometimes, however baffling, a political ally of the hard-right followers of Efraín Ríos Montt, who is facing charges of genocide for his role in massacres against indigenous Mayans in the early 1980s) won seven seats.

Since the end of Guatemala’s civil war and the country’s return to democracy, despite its corruption and imperfections, political parties are organized more around personalities and patronage networks than ideologies.

Though both the Guatemalan and international press have focused on the photo-finish race for the presidency, there are two important lessons in the congressional election results.

First, with such a divided Congress, Guatemala’s next president will not command a majority. Pérez Molina benefited from a casual alliance with LIDER, a symbiotic arrangement that gave Pérez Molina a working congressional majority (including, until two weeks ago, a bulwark against stripping him of presidential immunity) and Baldizón a patina of ‘inevitability’ to succeed Pérez Molina (though that obviously backfired given the tens of thousands of Guatemalans protesting politics as usual).

But the winner of the runoff will have to build a multi-party coalition to govern effectively. That’s especially true if he or she hopes to enact campaign finance reforms to reduce the role of corruption in politics from illicit contributions by business interests and drug traffickers alike. Morales has so far refused to make any electoral deals with either the UNE and LIDER, and that’s probably good politics. But he will nevertheless need to build a majority if he wants to accomplish anything if he wins the October runoff.

The second lesson is that the old guard is alive and well in Guatemalan politics. The FCN’s fifth-place finish indicates that Morales may well have trouble mobilizing an effective national campaign in the runoff. That’s true if, as now seems likely, his opponent will be Torres, but it will be even more so if, somehow, Baldizón manages to claw his way into the second round. LIDER, the UNE and the Patriotic Party together hold 97 seats, a supermajority of entrenched political elites who could effectively block reform.

For now, with just over 99% of all votes counted, Torres leads Baldizón by a margin of 19.79% to 19.64% (Morales won 23.85%) — that amounts to just 5,958 votes. Baldizón  is already arguing that the vote is fraudulent, and there’s no sign that he will easily concede defeat. So it may be days, or even weeks, before it’s clear who Morales will face in the runoff. Even if he doesn’t make it to the runoff, Baldizón’s party will still be a force to be reckoned with in the years ahead.

Torres edges Baldizón into Guatemalan runoff with Morales

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It was already tumultuous and historic week in Guatemala.guatemala flag icon

The country’s congress, after months of protest, stripped a sitting president of his immunity from prosecution. That president, Otto Pérez Molina, subsequently resigned, and officials then arrested and imprisoned him on corruption charges in relation to a scandal that’s already swept up more than a dozen ministers and Pérez Molina’s former vice president, who resigned in July.

Nevertheless, Guatemalans went to the polls on Sunday to choose both a new president and the entire 158-member Congreso, among other local municipality offices. Unsurprisingly, none of the presidential candidates won an absolute majority, so Guatemalans will vote again in an October 25 runoff.

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One of the candidates in that runoff will be independent candidate Jimmy Morales (pictured above), the leader of the previously little-known Frente de Convergencia Nacional (FCN, National Convergence Front). A comedian, Morales is a political neophyte whose campaign has railed against Guatemala’s political elite, a call that’s resonated as this week’s crisis hit its crescendo.

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RELATED: Yes, progress in Central America, but don’t call it a ‘spring’

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Sounding an anti-corruption note tempered by social conservatism and nationalist tones, Morales has the populist momentum heading into the runoff because he’s a newcomer viewed as unsullied by the sordid taint of corruption that infects more established politicians, including his two main rivals. Continue reading Torres edges Baldizón into Guatemalan runoff with Morales

Yes, progress in Central America, but don’t call it ‘spring’

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Photo credit to AFP.

I write for The National Interest on Friday that, despite the progress among civil society groups in Guatemala and Honduras and the resignation of Guatemala’s president Otto Pérez Molina under a cloud of corruption charges, it’s too simplistic to refer to a ‘Central American spring’:honduras flag iconguatemala flag icon

[T]he region’s democracy didn’t suddenly spring into existence in 2015. As the former Soviet Union and the Middle East have so painfully shown us, we should by now be wary of mad-libs punditry that falsely declares a rainbow’s worth of color revolutions, always overeager to set calendars to springtime. The full story of Central American governance today is one of gradual change and the development of mature political institutions only in fits and starts – it was only in 2009 that a military coup ousted Honduras’s left-wing president Manuel Zelaya. After nearly two centuries of war, imperialism and autocracy, Central America’s countries have enjoyed relative peace, democracy and full sovereignty only for the last quarter-century.

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RELATED: Guatemala lifts Pérez Molina’s immunity
six days before vote to replace him

RELATED: Three days before elections, Pérez Molina resigns
after arrest warrant issued

RELATED: Unaccompanied minors?
Blame a century of US Central American policy

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Moreover, I argue that policymakers might be too optimistic that the current victory for civil society institutions will translate into ever-stronger gains for Guatemala: Continue reading Yes, progress in Central America, but don’t call it ‘spring’

Three days before elections, Pérez Molina resigns after arrest warrant issued

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Within 48 hours of the decision of Guatemala’s Congress to lift president Otto Pérez Molina’s immunity form prosecution, the former army general met with charges of bribery and tax evasion and was warned not to leave the country. Early Thursday morning, he resigned the presidency — the first time that judicial pressure against corruption has forced out a Guatemalan president.guatemala flag icon

It’s the second time that a judicial process has attempted to hold a top official accountable in recent years. In 2013, a tribunal convicted Efraín Ríos Montt, the country’s military leader from 1982 to 1983, of genocide and crimes of humanity for his role in the massacre of at least 10,000 Ixil Mayans. Though Guatemala’s constitutional court eventually overturned the conviction, the 89-year-old Ríos Montt will undergo a retrial, though his attorneys argue he is mentally unfit for any trial or sentence.

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RELATED: Guatemala lifts Pérez Molina’s immunity
six days before vote to replace him

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The new acting president is Alejandro Maldonado, the 79-year-old who took over as vice president when Roxana Baldetti resigned (and she is now also facing trial for corruption charges). Maldonado is a former foreign minister, former ambassador to the United Nations and to Mexico, and he briefly served as the president of Guatemala’s constitutional court. It will be Maldonado who hands over power to the winner of Guatemala’s election this autumn.

Amid the high-stake drama, Guatemala’s presidential candidates are positioning for the general election set to take place this Sunday, September 6. After months of protests, Pérez Molina’s resignation seems most likely to benefit the independent candidacy of Jimmy Morales, a political neophyte and comedian who has run an anti-corruption campaign mixed with elements of social conservatism, populism and nationalism, though he has not been incredibly forthcoming about policy proposals. Some polls this week showed Morales overtaking frontrunner Manuel Baldizón. Like Pérez Molina, Baldizón is a longtime politician of the Guatemalan right, and Baldizón’s party, Libertad Democrática Renovada (LIDER, Renewed Democratic Liberty), is rumored to have financing ties to drug cartels and other corrupt elements within the country. Baldizón, the runner-up in the 2011 election, is running on the slogan, ‘Le toca,’ which translates to ‘His turn.’

Sandra Torres, the former first lady and Álvaro Colom’s ex-wife, is running as the candidate of the center-left Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE, National Unity of Hope). Zury Ríos, the daughter of the former military dictator, is running as the candidate of the right-wing Frente Republicano Guatemalteco (FRG, Guatemalan Republican Front).

If, as expected, no candidate wins an outright majority, the top two candidate will compete in an October 25 runoff. Voters will also elect the 158 members of the Guatemalan Congress on Sunday, which could give LIDER a firm hold on the legislative branch — even if an anti-corruption wave pushes Baldizón into second or third place on the presidential ballot.

Guatemala lifts Pérez Molina’s immunity six days before vote to replace him

gcityPhoto credit to Quetzalvision.

Six days before Guatemalans go to the polls to choose a successor to president Otto Pérez Molina, the country’s congress voted to strip the term-limited incumbent of his immunity, opening the way for what might become the first prosecution of a Guatemalan president on corruption charges in Guatemala.guatemala flag icon

The vote today in Guatemala’s Congress was historic, and it will make Sunday’s unpredictable general election even more difficult to forecast. But it wasn’t exactly a bombshell, even though it seems like a key turning point in the gradual maturation of Central American democracy and law.

When Pérez Molina, a retired army general, took office, he quickly found himself on Washington’s bad side when he argued for drug legalization as a solution to the decades-long failures of the US-led war on drugs. At home, however, he was regarded as a tough-on-crime conservative whose military background might help police efforts to reduce drug- and gang-related violence, despite murmurs about his role in various human rights abuses during Guatemala’s sprawling decades-long civil war that reached a gruesome nadir in the early 1980s.

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During his presidency, however, Guatemalans became increasingly angry over the corruption that, at best, took place on Pérez Molina’s watch and that, at worst, directly implicates Pérez Molina (pictured above). So far, 14 ministers have resigned as a result of a wide-ranging customs fraud scheme, referred to as La Línea, including seven ministers in August alone and finance minister Dorval Carías last week. Roxana Baldetti, Guatemala’s first female vice president, resigned in May and is now in prison pending trial on corruption charges. Pérez Molina continues to deny any wrongdoing on his part, and he defiantly refused to resign just last week in a press conference, buttressed perhaps with the support of Guatemala’s wealthiest businessman, telecom magnate Mario López Estrada.

Since a United Nations report first revealed the customs scandal in April, however, many Guatemalans have grown skeptical of Pérez Molina’s claims of innocence and, though he survived a congressional vote to remove his immunity last month, prosecutors later announced that they believed Pérez Molina is implicated in the customs scandal. Today’s congressional decision will allow prosecutors to move forward with tax evasion, money laundering or other corruption charges, and it makes it much less likely that Pérez Molina will survive in office until January, when Guatemala’s next president will assume power. Notably, even members of the conservative Partido Patriota (PP, Patriot Party) that Pérez Molina founded in 2001 supported the decision to lift his immunity, the recommendation of a congressional committee examining the scandal.

Corruption is rampant in the region, but voters are increasingly engaged and have started pushing back against the perception of widespread graft. Protesters in Honduras this summer are demanding accountability from officials, and in last year’s Costa Rican election, outgoing president Laura Chinchilla’s administration was seen as so scandal–plagued that her party’s candidate, San Jose mayor Johnny Araya, withdrew from a runoff rather than face a shellacking from his rival, the soft-spoken diplomat and political neophyte Luis Guillermo Solís.

So where does that leave the Guatemalan presidential election? Continue reading Guatemala lifts Pérez Molina’s immunity six days before vote to replace him