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Caribbean & Central America - September 2015 (ISSN 1741-4458)

A first for Guatemala as Pérez Molina resigns

Few events trump a general election. However, three days before the 6 September elections in Guatemala for the presidency, the 158-seat unicameral legislature and 338 mayoral posts, President Otto Pérez Molina resigned. Replaced by Vice President Alejandro Maldonado, who serves out the rest of the four-year term ending in January 2016, Pérez Molina’s move, unprecedented in Guatemala’s recent history, followed an arrest warrant issued after congress voted to strip the president of his immunity, so that he could be investigated for alleged corruption. The congressional move, in turn, was in response to a request by the United Nations (UN)-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (Cicig) and the local attorney general’s office (AG). Pérez Molina’s departure has been hailed as a turning point in a country with notorious impunity levels. In a further sign of the backlash against official corruption, which has also implicated the main opposition parties, Libertad Democrática Renovada (Líder) and Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE), Jimmy Morales, the ‘anti-establishment’ candidate for the small conservative Frente de Convergencia Nacional (FCN-Nación) won the first round of the presidential contest. Whether the winner of the 25 October run-off will instigate a genuine break from the past, however, remains to be seen.

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