Caribbean & Central America - August 2008 (ISSN 1741-4458)
GUATEMALA: Attorney general steps down as high level changes continue
The spate of government dismissals which began last month with the departure of the health and agriculture ministers [RC-08-07] continued with the resignation of chief prosecutor, Juan Luis Florido, on 29 July. The move was welcomed by various sectors that accused him of being inefficient as well as contributing to the impunity which afflicts the country. Florido was not the only senior official to be replaced, however - two high level members of the defence ministry, the director of the tourism institute, and the head of the tax administration also featured among recent departures.
Human rights organizations and civil society groups such as Fundación Mack, Acción Ciudadana, and Seguridad en Democracia had been clamouring for Florido's resignation for weeks, pointing to his office's “disastrous" (2%) success record in terms of solving cases over the last four years. These calls had been echoed by the UN-backed international commission against impunity in Guatemala (Cicig), with Cicig head Carlos Castresena warning President Alvaro Colom that without a thorough purge of the attorney general's office there would be no hope of any progress in the battle against organized crime.
Cited as particular cause for concern was Florido's failure to address the banking crisis triggered by the bankruptcy of Bancafé, Guatemala's fourth largest bank in October 2006, as well as the so-called “Salvadorean" murder case. In the case, four senior police officials - who were arrested for the murders of three Salvadorean deputies in Guatemala in February 2007 - were themselves murdered in a high security prison near Guatemala City [RC-07-03].
Florido's replacement, district attorney José Amílcar Velásquez Zárate, faces a daunting task in addressing the country's soaring crime rates - recent figures cited at the Second Ibero-American Forum on citizen security revealed Guatemala to have the second highest homicide rate in Central America after El Salvador (45.2 murders per 100,000 inhabitants). Indeed, just hours before the announcement of Florido's resignation Ronald Eduardo Chang Apuy, brother of well-known human rights activist Helen Mack, was shot and seriously wounded by gunmen in the capital. Their sister, Myrna, was murdered by the military during Guatemala's 1960-1996 civil war.
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More “restructuring" Other notable recent departures include planning minister Óscar Figueroa, previously accused of nepotism, and the president and vice president of the state-owned mortgage bank, Crédito Hipotecario Nacional, Oscar Francisco Pineda and Edgar Estuardo Ramírez, respectively. The local press claims they were fired for corruption. The director of the Guatemalan tourism institute, Julio Orozco, also resigned at the end of July, citing lack of government support to implement his plans. The head of the tax administration, Carolina Roca, quit for health reasons, and disgraced congress leader Eduardo Meyer made his resignation a formality on 6 August, after an investigation into his alleged role in a recent congressional scandal [RC-08-06] failed to clear his name. |
According to human rights organization, Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo, at least 1,387 murders were reported in the first half of 2008, of which 82 were cases of extra-judicial execution (acts perpetrated by the state) and three were lynchings.