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President Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala Resigns Amid Scandal President Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala Resigns Amid Scandal
(about 5 hours later)
MEXICO CITY — President Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala resigned on Thursday to face charges in a customs fraud scandal that has generated a sweeping protest movement of citizens enraged by government corruption. MEXICO CITY — After months of standing fast against a growing protest movement, President Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala suddenly tendered his resignation overnight, validating demonstrations by Guatemalans enraged over a fraud scandal that has rocked the country and reverberated through the region.
In a letter to the president of Congress, Mr. Pérez Molina said that he was resigning to “face justice and resolve my personal situation.” Vice President Alejandro Maldonado is expected to become president for the remainder of Mr. Pérez Molina’s term, which ends in January. Mr. Pérez Molina, a former general who was the military’s negotiator during talks to end of the nation’s brutal 36-year civil war, offered to present himself for possible charges in a multimillion-dollar customs fraud case, saying he would “face justice and resolve my personal situation.” Before, he had denied wrongdoing and refused to budge from office even as tens of thousands of Guatemalans took to the streets.
The resignation was viewed as a victory for the rule of law in a country with a long history of impunity for the business and political elite. Networks of corruption have gone unpunished as powerful groups succeeded in turning the law to their own advantage. Congress was set to vote Thursday morning on accepting Mr. Pérez Molina’s resignation, which was filed just before midnight Wednesday. The vote would allow Vice President Alejandro Maldonado to assume the role for the remainder of the term, which ends in January.
But in a series of swift-moving events since prosecutors first accused Mr. Pérez Molina two weeks ago of leading the customs fraud scheme, his allies in the cabinet and the powerful business confederation deserted him, and street protests mounted. Then, on Tuesday, Congress voted to strip him of immunity from prosecution. Mr. Pérez Molina, 64, is the first president in Guatemalan history to resign because of corruption, experts said, offering a rare example in a region long marked by the impunity of its political class. And though the economy and reform efforts in Guatemala have lagged compared with those in other countries in Latin America, the move put it firmly within a wave of efforts elsewhere in the region to make political systems more responsive toward the public, especially the middle class.
As late as Wednesday, after Attorney General Thelma Aldana announced that a judge had granted a warrant for his arrest, Mr. Pérez Molina’s lawyers were insisting that he would not resign. But overnight, he changed his mind. That peaceful protests have managed to oust a powerful leader who many say was connected to the dark history of the war, in which a United Nations panel concluded that the government was behind the majority of the 200,000 deaths in the conflict, has left those outside and within Guatemala stunned. Even before sunrise, protesters were starting to gather in the Plaza Central of Guatemala City, the nerve center for the widespread protests that started in April.
It is still unclear if a judge will order his arrest or will order him to appear in court, which his lawyers have said he will do. The hearing could come as early as Thursday. But major questions loom for the country. Before the seismic challenge of transitioning from a system of impunity to one responsive to its people lies a more immediate one: Sunday’s election to replace Mr. Pérez Molina.
At the center of the events that led to Mr. Pérez Molina’s downfall is a persistent citizens movement that brought together vastly different groups for the first time. Guatemala City’s middle class, long reluctant to speak out after a brutal civil war demonstrated the costs of opposition, joined forces with peasant and indigenous groups. The president’s sudden departure leaves almost no time under the current schedule to enact serious reforms before the ball is set in motion for the next government. And the candidates for president were fielded in a world fundamentally different from the one that Guatemalans woke to on Thursday.
The political turmoil comes three days before a general election scheduled for Sunday. Mr. Pérez Molina was not eligible for re-election, but many of the demonstrators who have filled the central square in Guatemala City, the capital, have been unsatisfied with the choices before them. “At their finest moment, Guatemalans are faced with this really difficult choice between candidates who may not lead to the kinds of changes that people have been fighting for,” said Eric L. Olson, a scholar at the Mexico Institute of the Wilson Center. “It’s one thing to want a corrupt government out and another thing to move toward another form of government.”
The leading candidate, Manuel Baldizón, a wealthy businessman, is widely seen as part of the same corrupt political system as the incumbent. His vice-presidential candidate faces charges in a separate corruption case, and Mr. Baldizón’s party had maintained a close alliance with Mr. Pérez Molina and his party. The political convulsions in Guatemala are part of a broader realignment underway in Latin America, though one that has been distinct country by country. In recent years, important protest movements have cropped up in Brazil, Chile, Peru, Ecuador and elsewhere.
Civic groups and academics had proposed postponing the vote, but they were blocked by the electoral tribunal. But given Guatemala’s tragic history, the shifts there were already being seen as a dramatic example of change against long odds. In neighboring Honduras, for instance, large protests have also ignited a debate about whether to adopt a model similar to Guatemala’s, in which an international team of investigators has been deployed to bolster the nation’s law enforcement capacity.
If no candidate wins 50 percent on Sunday, the vote will move to a second round on Oct. 25. The other leading candidates are the comedian Jimmy Morales, who has moved up in the polls because he is seen as an outsider, and Sandra Torres, a former first lady. The resignation is the culmination of months of protests that drew tens of thousands into the street, estimated to peak at around 100,000 in the past week. They were reacting to a fraud case in which millions of dollars was said to have been siphoned from customs revenue and contracts, even while Guatemalans suffered in hospitals without medicine and police forces did not even have enough fuel to report to crime scenes.
The political turmoil that led to Mr. Pérez Molina’s resignation began in April when prosecutors first revealed the existence of the customs fraud scheme, in which importers paid bribes in exchange for discounts on tariffs. Since April, when prosecutors and the United Nations-backed investigative body first unveiled the customs fraud, a “Who’s Who” of the nation’s political elite have been implicated in a series of scandals, including the central bank president, a former energy minister and the president’s son-in-law. The former vice president is in prison.
A panel of international prosecutors backed by the United Nations helped Ms. Aldana’s office develop the complex case using wiretaps and financial statements. To many observers, the work of the nine-year-old anticorruption panel has been essential to strengthening prosecutors and courts. Driving much of the public rage has been a series of investigations by an uncommon alliance of local prosecutors and the team of investigators backed by the United Nations, known as the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, or its Spanish language acronym Cicig.
Although Mr. Pérez Molina was not directly named at the time, Guatemalans began to stage weekly protests to demand his resignation. His vice president, Roxana Baldetti, who was also linked to the scheme, resigned in May and was arrested two weeks ago. Originally stationed in the country in 2007 to help root out the nation’s notorious criminal-political networks, the commission has emboldened the nation’s own prosecutors to take on the rich and powerful elite and become a source of inspiration and hope for many Guatemalans. But that has also meant that the commission is seen as inextricably linked to the nation’s recent successes, raising questions about what will happen with the nation’s own law enforcement system if and when Cicig departs.
Both deny any involvement. “I think it’s always something that one has to be vigilant about,” Mr. Olson said. “It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that a new president may try to impose a new attorney general and return to the status quo.”
For much of its history, Guatemalan society has been somewhat fractious, its different constituencies fighting their own battles alone. The nation’s indigenous population, which suffered the most under the civil war, has long fought for equal rights with little success.
But the movement that began in April has forged an unprecedented alliance of different groups. Guatemala City’s middle class, long reluctant to speak out after the deadly suppression of the civil war, began joining forces with peasant and indigenous groups. Eventually, the nation’s church and business leaders also joined sides with the protesters to demand change.
The final unraveling for Mr. Pérez Molina’s tenure appeared to be two weeks ago, when the Cicig’s commissioner and the Guatemalan attorney general called a news conference in which they accused the president of being the ring leader of the customs fraud. Prosecutors and investigators had amassed wire taps and other records pointing to his involvement, they said, in an announcement that reinvigorated the protests and led congress to strip the president’s immunity from prosecution this week.
Now, as the nation finds itself in the grips of the change it has demanded for months, the elections loom. Civic groups and academics had proposed postponing the vote to allow time for electoral reforms but were blocked by the electoral tribunal. The American Embassy in Guatemala, for its part, has said it would like to see the elections held on time.
None of the candidates had been expected to win 50 percent or more of the vote, making it likely to go to runoff election, tentatively scheduled for Oct. 25.
Protesters, however, have not been happy about the roster of candidates that awaits. The leading candidate, Manuel Baldizón, a wealthy businessman, is widely seen as part of the same corrupt political system. His vice-presidential candidate faces charges in a separate corruption case, and Mr. Baldizón’s party had maintained a close alliance with Mr. Pérez Molina and his party.
The other leading candidates are the comedian Jimmy Morales, who has moved up in the polls because he is seen as outsider, and Sandra Torres, a former first lady.