The news of the dismissal of the head of the Special Prosecutor's Office Against Impunity in Guatemala (FECI), Juan Francisco Sandoval, has set off all alarms about the commitment of the authorities of the Central American country in the fight against corruption and respect for the institutions .
The departure of Sandoval has unleashed a wave of protests and rejection from the international community, which points to the management of the prosecutor, Consuelo Porras, as the architect of the dismissal.
“Today,” comments the Attorney for Human Rights, Jordán Rodas, “the Attorney General is not an independent official.
It is subject to pressure from politicians and the most ultra-conservative sector of the economic sector, affected by the investigations carried out by the FECI ”.
Rodas recalls that Sandoval's dismissal is only "the icing on the cake", since in recent weeks there have been changes of officials at the convenience of the powerful sectors that have established a kind of justice à la carte.
"This is no longer justice, so I asked both the prosecutor and the president [Alejandro Giammattei] himself to present their irrevocable resignation from office," adds Rodas.
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The
ombudsman
qualifies this measure as "an international scandal" the fact that a first-rate, internationally recognized prosecutor, far from strengthening him, is a victim of boycott, an extreme that removes the possibility of foreign investment from which the country is urged.
"The light at the end of this tunnel lies in the exercise of citizenship, where grassroots organizations such as the 48 Cantons of Totonicapán enforce their citizen rights to end this 'cardboard institutionality' that does not favor the population at all," he closes Rhodes.
In diplomatic and political circles the dismissal is directly attributed to the fact that the investigations of the Prosecutor's Office led by Sandoval exposed the untouchable sectors, known as 'The Corrupt Pact', in whose corridors it was decided to leave the two stones in the shoe that After co-opting the Legislative and Judicial powers and institutions theoretically destined to guarantee the independence of powers, such as the Constitutional one, they were particularly uncomfortable.
They only had Sandoval left.
Rhodes is next on the list.
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The decision had been made and it was so evident that during her visit to Guatemala on June 6, the Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris announced the creation of a Working Group to support the work of the FECI, while the head of US diplomacy, Anthony Blinken, warned Giammattei of his concern about "any effort to abolish anti-corruption offices."
Sandoval left Guatemala via El Salvador in the early hours of Saturday, just after his dismissal, to protect his life.
But first he wanted to leave a testimony that sheds more light on the way in which all the country's institutions have been co-opted, with very specific accusations.
On the prosecutor Consuelo Porras, of whom he pointed out to land on the investigations that reached the circle of confidence of Giammattei.
"He did not explicitly tell me not to investigate the president, but he was putting aside the file," Sandoval said at a mile-long press conference.
People participate in a protest in support of Juan Francisco Sandoval, who was dismissed by the Attorney General of Guatemala as head of the Special Prosecutor Against Impunity.STRINGER / Reuters
He also hid a case involving the TIGO telephone company and narrated that in 2014 and 2015, the then vice president, Roxana Baldetti, bribed a very important group of deputies to approve the so-called Tigo Law, with bimonthly payments of 50,000 quetzals (about $ 6,400) to expand its network nationwide.
But the most recent case that could be the trigger for his dismissal was the confiscation of 122 million quetzals (about 15.6 million dollars) that belonged to the Minister of Communications, "a case that we had to work in secret, to avoid the leaks, ”he said.
And like these, up to 10 cases that show the cooptation of the State.
General stoppage
With the plundering of the State as the only government policy, the population looks very tired. Fatigue that is more evident in the populations of Mayan origin, secularly ignored and marginalized and that, now, seem to agglutinate even the mestizo population of the city, who cry out to close the roads and isolate the country as the only way to punish the economic sector.
This strike is scheduled for the week that begins today and has three specific requests: the immediate restitution of prosecutor Juan Francisco Sandoval and the resignation of the attorney general, Consuelo Porras and President Alejandro Giammattei. “We are going to show that the united peoples will know how to impose what we want: an inclusive country. From now on we apologize for the actions in fact to each citizen worker or entrepreneur for the inconvenience that we will cause them, but only in this way will the government understand ”, reads a statement from the 48 Cantons of Totonicapán. In the early hours of Monday they will give details of how the protest will be carried out.