Even before the supreme court ruled, on 5 July, against retired General Efraín Ríos Montt's registration as the presidential candidate of the ruling Frente Republicano Guatemalteco (FRG -see WR-03-20), it had become clear why the 77-year-old former dictator was insisting again on a bid that had already been blocked twice by the electoral authorities and the courts.
The key was provided by Ríos Montt himself, when he boasted to journalists, 'In the constitutional court we stand 4:3.' His lawyers had already indicated that if they failed with the supreme court on the same old constitutional objection, they would appeal to the constitutional court.
Of that court's seven current members, four have been appointed by the FRG government.
Automatic majority? Ríos Montt takes it for granted that they will rule in his favour. There is a precedent: in the supreme court the single vote in favour of allowing Ríos Montt's candidacy was that of Roderico Pineda, an admitted FRG sympathiser who was appointed in 2000. All top court appointments have to be ratified by congress, a body of which Ríos Montt is president.
The argument on which Ríos Montt's candidacy was refused, now as in 1990 and 1995, is that a clause in the constitution bars from running for the presidency or vice-presidency anyone who has taken part in a coup or uprising that has breached the constitutional order.
Justifying his dissenting vote, Pineda argued that this provision in the 1985 could not be applied retroactively to Ríos Montt, who headed a military government in 1982-83. This is the argument that the government, from President Alfonso Portillo down, has been voicing for some time.
Once the appeal is filed, the constitutional court must come up with a provisional ruling within three days, giving Ríos Montt the chance to register in good time for the 9 November elections.
From soldiers to politicians. As Ríos Montt's presence in congress so clearly demonstrates, there is no bar against former members of military governments running for lesser elective posts. Apart from Ríos Montt, there are 18 retired military officers registered as candidates. This has riled human rights organisations, as several of these have played prominent roles in rights violations in the not-so-distant past.
The roster of military candidates includes:
General Otto Pérez Molina, former head of the Estado Mayor Presidencial (EMP, the body from which repression, overt and covert, was directed).
General Marco Tulio Espinoza, another former head of the EMP.
General Héctor Gramajo, defence minister under (elected) President Vinicio Cerezo (1986-90).
General Julio Balconi, defence minister during the (elected) presidency of Alvaro Arzú (1996-2000).
Lieutenant-Colonel Otto Noack, who resigned from the army in 2000 after having been punished for stating to the press that the army should admit its responsibility for human rights violations during Guatemala's long internal war.
Still powerful. According to José Rubén Zamora, chairman of the editorial board of the newspaper El Periódico, the military are still the real power in the land. Guatemala's elected presidents since 1986, he says, 'have been puppets, democratic façades for these people.'
Zamora was one of several members of the press who have been targeted in a rough intimidation campaign attributed to 'clandestine security groups' -people who, according to human rights procurator Sergio Morales, display the same modus operandi as the old 'death squads' linked to the official security apparatus.
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