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“A lost battle but not a lost war”. This was the response by former First Lady Sandra Torres to the definitive ruling by the constitutional court (CC) which leaves her out of the 11 September presidential race and the centre-left ruling Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE) and its right-leaning ally, Gran Alianza Nacional (Gana) without a candidate. Hailed by some as a “boost” for Guatemala’s institutions, particularly given initial fears that the UNE would not respect the verdict or resultant electoral process, the decision leaves current frontrunner, right-wing former general Otto Pérez Molina of the Partido Patriota (PP) near assured of victory although, with recent polls showing him slipping, a first round win could prove elusive.
The CC decision, on 8 August, was unanimous. The ruling stated that despite Torres’ divorce from President Alvaro Colom in April, explicitly designed to sidestep the constitutional ban on the presidential candidacy of any close relatives of the incumbent, their relationship still “exists”. The CC ruling avoided mention, however, of the previous findings by the supreme court (CSJ) and the supreme electoral court (TSE) that the divorce itself constituted “legal fraud”. The fact that the ruling was unanimous was significant, as the seven magistrates (five main judges and two alternates) included Gloria Porras, who had been picked by Colom, and her alternate, Héctor Trujillo who is rumoured to be Torres’ personal lawyer.
Torres’ response to the ruling the next day - that she “accepted [it] but did not agree [with it]” - coupled with Colom’s public call for the decision to be respected, was also significant. It assuaged concerns which had emerged in the run-up to the court’s decision of both a repeat of the violence and undermining of the institutional process which had characterised the other high-profile (and ultimately successful) attempt to overturn a court decision disqualifying a candidacy – ex-dictator Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-3) in 2003 [WR-11-28]: the week prior to the CC ruling, UNE campaign chief Orlando Blanco had told the foreign press the party would not recognise the electoral outcome were Torres not allowed to participate, while the UNE had also staged demonstrations in the capital in a bid to put pressure on the courts – evoking fears of a repeat of 2003.
A new source of speculation
While the UNE has said that it will now focus on the legislative and municipal contest (having won 51 legislative seats in the 158-member unicameral congress in 2007 and 103 mayoral seats of 332) the party’s acceptance of the CC ruling is now fuelling a new topic of speculation: with the deadline to register candidates long gone, leaving it without a presidential candidate, which, if any, of the nine parties whose presidential candidates have been accepted (the tenth, a former evangelical pastor, Harold Caballeros, is still awaiting the final verdict on his candidacy [WR-11-28]) will it back on 11 September? After all, the UNE remains by far the biggest party in the country with 93,065 registered members as of June 2011 according to the TSE, to which can be added the 30,671 registered Gana members. This compares to 48,823 for the PP.
Neither of the two main rivals to Pérez Molina (who was previously leading second-placed Torres by some 20 percentage points) - Eduardo Suger (Compromiso, Renovación y Orden [CREO]) nor Manuel Baldizón of the dissident UNE group, Libertad Democrática Renovada (Líder) – are obvious choices, although the notorious lack of ideology underpinning party politics in the country makes it difficult to predict alliances. An academic who founded the Galileo technical university in Guatemala City in 2000 and is citing education as a campaign priority, Suger ran for the right-wing Centro de Acción Social (CASA) in 2007 coming in fourth and the Desarrollo Integral Auténtico (DIA) in 2003, coming in seventh. In the 2007 run-off he backed Pérez Molina who has reportedly invited him to take part in a future PP government.
An UNE alliance with Baldizón, a populist from the rural northern region of Petén (Torres’ home region) whose headline grabbing campaign proposal is a pledge to bring back the death penalty (see sidebar) is also doubtful: Baldizón’s decision to split with the ruling party in 2008 in order to establish Líder to pursue his own political ambitions [WR-08-49], which significantly reduced UNE representation in congress (currently at 32 seats compared with 28 for Líder) left bad-blood within the UNE which accused him of using the party ticket to get elected to congress. Of Pérez Molina’s two chief rivals, Baldizón is, however, the candidate most clearly seeking to appeal to Torres’ support base (the impoverished rural majority), with promises to continue her social initiatives, such as the government’s flagship cash transfer programme ‘Mifamilia Progresa’ (MifaPro) – which formed the bedrock of her campaign.
- Pérez Molina slips in the polls
According to a poll in the national daily Prensa Libre on 1 August (prior to the constitutional court’s ruling), support for Otto Pérez Molina fell to 38% in July, down from 43% in June although he still led Sandra Torres by 20 percentage points. Support for Torres was up to 17%, from 15% in June, with Eduardo Suger on 9% and Manuel Baldizón on 8%. The poll also included a scenario without Torres in which Pérez Molina polled 41%, to 14% for Baldizón. This is still well short of the 50% plus one needed for an outright first round victory.
Local experts downplayed the significance of Pérez Molina’s fall, attributing it to an early peak and his absence from some debates (although the latter was a factor which played a part in his 2007 defeat by Colom). The renewed focus on the civil war (1960-1996) as a result of recent high-profile convictions and arrests [WR-11-31] has not been linked to the dip. Yet it is worth noting that last month, three human rights defenders filed a complaint before the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture against Pérez Molina, a former head of military intelligence (D-2) (1992-3) and commander of the army detachment in Quiché in 1982-3. The letter noted that “half of all the massacres took place during this period and in this region [under his command]”, and accused him of responsibility for the torture and disappearance of a prisoner of war, Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, while head of the D-2.
A lawyer and businessman with interests in the transport, tourism and real estate sectors, Manuel Baldizón was singled out in a September 2010 report by the Dutch think tank, Clingendael Institute. Noting that the Petén is “generally viewed as the nerve centre of narco-trafficking in Guatemala”, the report cites “suspicions” over the source of Líder’s funds and “particularly on [Baldizón’s] business activities”. The report continues: “at the very least, it may be surmised that Baldizón and his colleagues derive their resources from local networks, some of them undoubtedly involved in profiting from inflated public sector contracts with favoured businesses rather than metropolitan networks.
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