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Guatemala president's order to expel head of UN unit suspended Guatemala falls into deep political crisis over corruption
(about 1 hour later)
Guatemala’s constitutional court on Sunday suspended an order by President Jimmy Morales to expel the head of an influential UN unit investigating campaign financing, setting the stage for political instability in the Central American nation. Guatemala fell into deep political crisis on Sunday, after the president declared the United Nations-backed anti-corruption chief investigating him and his party persona non grata, only to have the expulsion order blocked hours later by the country’s supreme court.
The court also said the foreign, defense and interior ministers should not participate in removing from the country Ivan Velasquez, head of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). Jimmy Morales, a former comedian who was elected president two years ago after the previous government was toppled by corruption charges, was left fighting for his political survival – and freedom – after the failed attempt to oust head of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), Iván Velásquez.
Speaking in a video published on his Facebook account earlier on Sunday, Morales had said that Velasquez must leave national territory with immediate effect. Morales announced the expulsion of the respected Colombian prosecutor via a video posted on his Twitter account in the early hours of Sunday morning. He also announced that he was firing the foreign minister for failing to carry out the expulsion, replacing him with an ally who is under investigation for illegal adoptions.
An innovative UN body with powers to investigate crime and corruption, CICIG was instrumental in removing Guatemala’s former president from office in 2015 after identifying him as a key player in an alleged multimillion-dollar corruption racket. The announcements were made less than 48 hours after Velásquez and Thelma Aldana, the attorney general, asked the supreme court to strip Morales of his political immunity in order to proceed with charges linked to illegal campaign funds allegedly received by his political party the National Convergence Front (FCN) during the 2015 election.
Morales took office in 2016, winning the election on an anti-corruption ticket after his predecessor was brought down. Prosecutors allege that Morales has refused to account for more than $800,000 (£620,000) in campaign financing and had hidden his own party’s accounts. Morales, who ran for president under the slogan “neither corrupt nor a crook”, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
Morales’s declaration that Velasquez was persona non grata came days after the CICIG said the president should be investigated over alleged illicit funding during his election campaign. The investigation of election campaign funds is part of a sweeping inquiry into Guatemala’s deep-seated problem of political parties accepting money from organised crime groups and powerful business leaders in exchange for public contracts, kickbacks and protection from the law.
Many politicians in Guatemala consider the body to be a violation of national sovereignty, while anti-corruption activists credit it with cleaning up government. Prosecutors moved against Morales while he was in New York trying – but failing – to persuade the UN secretary general to fire Velásquez.
Protesters gathered on Sunday outside CICIG’s offices and the court in support of Velasquez, a veteran prosecutor who has previously investigated drug cartels and paramilitary groups in his home country, Colombia. Judges will rule on the immunity request on Monday. If it is lifted and congress votes in favour of impeachment, Morales could be arrested within days.
The Guatemalan foreign minister, Carlos Raul Morales, left the government on Sunday, according to the ministry’s Twitter account. The circumstances of his departure were not immediately clear, but the former minister, who is not related to the president, said on Friday he would resign if Velasquez was forced out. But activists fear Morales and his military advisers are unlikely to accept the same fate that led to the fall of former president and military general Otto Pérez Molina and vice-president Roxanna Baldetti. The pair were jailed immediately after being impeached in 2015, amidst an unprecedented wave of mass protests.
The UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, said he was “shocked” by Morales’s move and called on Guatemalan authorities to treat Velasquez with respect. Thousands took to the streets of the capital, Guatemala City, amid growing fears that Morales is poised to declare a state of siege. An internal police memo seen by the Guardian revealed all leave has been cancelled for the country’s elite special forces.
Eliot Engel, a member of the US House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, said he was “extremely disappointed” by the decision to expel Velasquez and called on the state department and Congress to examine the future of US assistance to the Guatemalan government. “There’s a huge risk that Morales and his close circle of old military guard could order a state of siege to try to stop the justice process,” Anabella Sibrian, director of the NGO International Platform against Impunity, told the Guardian in a telephone interview from outside the CICIG offices in Guatemala City.
“CICIG has played a transformational role in combating corruption and impunity in Guatemala,” Engel said in a statement. “What we’ve seen today is an arbitrary act against internationally backed anti-corruption figureheads, but it is also a strong message to the country’s increasingly robust social movements that they could be next.”
The FCN was formed by a group of hardline military officials suspected of grave human rights violations during the Central American’s country’s 36-year civil war in which 200,000 people, mainly indigenous civilians, were killed.
CICIG was created to help dismantle parallel security structures and organised crime rings dating back to the civil war. Velásquez has come under attack in recent months as investigators close in on economic and military links to the current government.
International embassies including those of the US and EU came out strongly in his support on Sunday, as several ministers resigned in protest at Morales’ bid to fire him.
Velásquez is believed to be inside the office of the human rights prosecutor, who called for urgent protective measures for the three judges who voted against the expulsion order.
“This is a dark day for justice in Guatemala, a constitutional crisis triggered by the president, his military allies and organised associates who are already facing trial or fearful that they could be next,” said Jo-Marie Burt, a Guatemalan justice expert and senior fellow at the Washington Office at Latin America (WOLA).
“But even if important figureheads are forced out, while this would be a serious blow it would not the end of the world. The anti-corruption investigations would continue.”