A whole political storm surrounds Colombia and Guatemala since Monday night. On that occasion, Guatemalan prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche announced that will undertake a series of legal actions against the current Colombian Defense Minister, Iván Velásquez, for his performance while he was in charge of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (Cicig) between 2013 and 2019.
According to Currichiche, Velásquez approved abnormal cooperation agreements in the middle of the process against the Brazilian company Odebrecht.
For experts consulted by EL TIEMPO, the accusation against Velásquez is part of an authoritarian wave launched by the Guatemalan government, currently headed by the President Alejandro Giammattei.
The current president is accused by social sectors of repressing freedom of the press and carrying out a setback in the rule of law.
Who is Alejandro Giammattei and what criticism is there against the current Guatemalan president?
Giammattei: four attempts to reach the presidency
Alejandro Giammattei assumed the presidency in January 2020, after winning the second round of elections marked by abstention.
However, Giammattei was not an unknown face for Guatemalan citizens. This former doctor had run for president in 2007, 2011 and 2015, each running with a different party.
Before that, he was a candidate for mayor of Guatemala City in 1999 and 2003.
According to the Latin American Strategic Center for Geopolitics (Celag), Giammattei’s election in 2019 occurred in an atypical scenario. The candidate Mario Estrada, for example, was captured in the United States accused of links to drug trafficking.
(You may be interested in: Why Guatemala wants to bring the Colombian Defense Minister to justice)
Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei.
At the same time, Thelma Aldana, former attorney general of the nation, was withdrawn from the elections accused of corruption and Zury Ríos was also withdrawn following the rule that prevents relatives of former dictators from aspiring to lead the country.
After 12 years as a candidate, Giammattei became president in an election with an abstention rate of 61.41%. On that occasion, only 1.9 million people -of the five million authorized- gave their vote to the now president, who will end his term on January 14, 2024.
The critics against him
However, the Giammattei government has been the object of multiple criticisms from the international community and social organizations.
“In Guatemala, authoritarianism went from bending over. There is a lot of talk about authoritarianism in El Salvador, of authoritarianism in Nicaragua, there is a lot of talk about Venezuela, but Guatemala has gone from bending over despite the fact that, for example, there has been an excess in the use of force in demonstrations against the government, there has been corruption in the highest spheres, there has been prosecution of politics,” analyst Mauricio Jaramillo told this newspaper.
Some time ago, Valeria Vásquez, Control Risks analyst for Central America, told EL TIEMPO that “Alejandro Giammattei has carried out a setback in the rule of law by shaping a judicial apparatus that has been placed at his disposal.”
(Keep reading: Washington condemns persecution of former anti-corruption officials in Guatemala)
Human Right Watch (HRW) also sees it that way, which in its 2022 report states that “President Alejandro Giammattei and his allies deepened the deterioration of democracy in Guatemalain an apparent attempt to avoid accountability for widespread corruption, even at the highest levels of the state.”
President Alejandro Giammattei and his allies deepened the deterioration of democracy in Guatemala
And it is that one of the main criticisms of his mandate has been the lack of independence of the judicial system. In May 2022, for example, Giammattei renewed the mandate of Consuelo Porras, the current attorney general, who will be in office for four more years.
Porras is accused by the United States government of having participated in “significant acts of corruption.”
In fact, the US State Department included her on the Engel list and accuses her of “repeatedly obstructing and undermining investigations against corruption in Guatemala for the purpose of protecting her political allies and gaining undue political favors.”
Despite this, after re-electing Porras as head of the Public Ministry, Giammattei pointed out that the media accusations had no value in trying to strip Porras of “his ability, suitability and honesty.”
In its 2022 report, HRW notes that during his first term, Porras promoted criminal proceedings against judges, journalists, and independent prosecutors. At least 30 lawyers and public sector workers have left the country in recent years denouncing “judicial persecution” by the Prosecutor’s Office.
(Also: Guatemala responds to Petro and calls its ambassador in Colombia for consultation)
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Maria Consuelo Porras, Attorney General of Guatemala.
“All those people who have played a fundamental role in denouncing corruption, in promoting prosecutions of high-impact cases have been criminalized. Since the internal armed conflict we have not seen these levels of closure of civic space and freedom of the press as we are seeing today,” says Ana María Méndez, director for Central America of the Washington Office on Latin American Affairs (Wola).
Giammattei is also accused of closing the doors to the press, preventing access to information, and generating a hostile climate for the independent press in that country.
According to figures from the Association of Guatemalan Journalists (APG), in 2022 there were 107 attacks and limitations on the activity of the press.
“From the beginning, when Giammattei assumed the presidency, he changed the relationship dynamics with the press, basically closing the doors of the Presidential House, not granting interviews and denying information,” Méndez told this newspaper in the past.
Since the beginning of the Giammattei period in 2019, the APG has registered 404 attacks against the press: 149 in 2020, 135 in 2021, 117 in 2022, and 3 in the first two weeks of 2023.
These attacks include obstruction of the source, threats, intimidation and, above all, judicial harassment.
The best-known case is that of journalist José Rubén Zamora, president of ElPeriódico accused in 2022 of money laundering and influence peddling and whose case unleashed a strong wave of rejection from international press associations.
“We urge you to allow investigative journalists to work freely and safely to open a new chapter in Guatemalan history, one that defines the country as a leader in protecting freedom of expression in the Americas,” it reads in a letter. sent to Giammattei in December by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
(Keep reading: Odebrecht: Guatemalan Prosecutor’s Office points to Iván Velásquez; defense ministry responds)
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Guatemalan citizens and journalists held a sit-in to protest against the capture of the journalist and president of El Periódico José Ruben Zamora.
HRW also points out that during the government of this 66-year-old politician, sentences for crimes that occurred during the armed conflict (1960 and 1996) stagnated and that attacks against human rights defenders increased.
To this is added that the president was publicly accused by witnesses of receiving bribes from Russian businessmen in a corruption scheme and that his management has also been marked by the purchase of vaccines from the Russian brand Sputnik, which was accused of irregularities due to the way in which they made the payments for the millions of doses purchased.
Giammattei, in any case, has already entered his last presidential year amid strong international criticism and with an approval rating of around 19 percent, according to 2022 data from the Cid-Gallup firm.
(You may be interested in: Guatemala: arrest of journalist revives debate on harassment of the press)
On the case of Iván Velásquez
This Monday, following the decision of the Guatemalan Public Ministry to take legal action against the Colombian Defense Minister, Iván Velásquez, relations between Guatemala and Colombia reached a point of high tension.
After President Petro defended the current minister, the president of
Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, called his Colombian counterpart to sanity on Tuesday and clarified that in no case was it a “criminal prosecution” against Velásquez.
But Giammattei went further in his statements: “I am going to let President Petro continue to make the mistake of a guerrilla, but that is not very political. I am not going to fall into the game. The differences between nations must be resolved through the to prevent conflicts from escalating to places where it is already difficult to get out,” Giammattei said in an interview with Efe in Madrid.
I am going to let President Petro continue to make the mistake of a guerrilla, but that is not very political
Méndez told EL TIEMPO that Giammattei’s comments regarding the Velásquez case are a sign of his authoritarian nature.
(Also: ‘The error of a guerrilla’: the offense of the president of Guatemala to Petro)
“It is worrying because one way to determine if a president is authoritarian or not is precisely with these types of comments, because they challenge an international legal order, they challenge diplomatic relations,” he says.
![](https://www.eltiempo.com/images/1x1.png)
Iván Velásquez, Minister of Defense
Ministry of Defence
Wola’s director for Central America also points out that, looking to the future, statements by the prosecutor’s office and members of the Giammattei government indicate that the process against Velásquez may reach its final consequences.
“There is, for the moment, nothing that can stop the accusations against Velásquez. I see many possibilities that this process advances and other criminalization processes also show us, such as the one that exists against the former prosecutor Thelma Aldana, who worked hand in hand with Iván Velásquez and who has four arrest warrants, despite the international support for his work. There is no stopping this, on the contrary it is escalating and that is why I call for the international community to set its eyes on Guatemala,” concludes Méndez.
For Jaramillo, the process against Velásquez may end in an arrest warrant, as a message from the government and the Guatemalan judiciary.
“For me, a scenario is that the prosecution says that you have to go all the way. They are sending a message to all the people who think differently from the establishment,” concludes the analyst.
ANGIE NATALY RUIZ HURTADO
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
TIME
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