Caribbean & Central America - November 2014 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Domestic and international concerns regarding the crucial September election of supreme court (CSJ) and appellate court justices [RC-14-10] in Guatemala ultimately had an impact. On 9 October the constitutional court (CC) suspended the swearing-in of the 13 new CSJ magistrates, 126 appeals’ courts judges and their alternates after admitting appeals against the election process. The decision comes as another key election is under way – to pick the new head of the comptroller general’s office (CGT). Again civil society groups are raising concerns regarding the independence of Guatemala’s institutions.

The CC magistrate, Gloria Porras (who was acting as president while Justice Roberto Molino Barreto was abroad), said that the decision to suspend the swearing-in of the new judges, due to assume their five-year posts on 13 October, was taken after the court admitted five different appeals against the election process submitted by individuals and civil society groups including the Centro para la Defensa de la Constitución and Acción Ciudadana. The 25 September election of CSJ magistrates and the 30 September election of appellate justices had been routinely slammed, not only by local civil society groups and the United Nations (UN)-backed anti-impunity commission (Cicig) but also by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers Gabriela Knaul and the US-based Washington Office on Latin America (Wola). Even one of the newly-elected appellate justices, Claudia Lissette Escobar Mejía, quit on 5 October, citing flaws with the procedure [RC-14-10]. Porras said that the current sitting judges would remain in their posts until the CC rules on the appeals, a process that could take between 30 and 45 days.

With the independence of Guatemala’s judiciary already under scrutiny, the election of the CGT head – which has the crucial mandate of overseeing and auditing State institutions – has attracted particular attention. The 158-member unicameral legislature is in the process of filling the post which is currently occupied on an interim basis by deputy comptroller, Héctor Santizo. This, after Molino ordered the CGT head, Nora Segura, to step down on 16 October on the grounds that her four-year mandate expired on 13 October. Segura initially refused, arguing that she took up her post later than planned due to procedural delays and so had yet to see out her full term, but she caved in the next day.

Segura was a controversial figure prompting transparency-related complaints from civil society groups like Acción Ciudadana (AC), the local branch of international NGO Transparency International (see sidebar). Concerns persist as to the independence of her eventual successor given that an 11 October report by investigative daily, El Periódico, noted that 12 of the 21 candidates on the shortlist proposed by legal experts, from which the legislature makes its choice, have links to the ruling Partido Patriota (PP).

Emblematic civil war case begins

The trial of a former police chief, Pedro García Arredondo, for allegedly masterminding a notorious attack by State security forces on the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City on 31 January 1980, began last month.

One of the defining events of Guatemala’s 1960-1996 civil war, the attack left 39 people dead, including Vicente Menchú, the father of Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize winner and indigenous leader, Rigoberta Menchú.

A former chief of the national police force’s 6th command under the military government headed by Fernando Romeo Lucas García (1978-82), García Arredondo has been identified as one of the main violators of human rights during the civil war by the local archbishop's human rights office (ODHA) and the United Nations Verification Mission in Guatemala (Minugua). He has already received a prison sentence for other civil war crimes – in August 2012 he was sentenced to 70 years imprisonment for the 1981 disappearance of Edgar Sáenz Calito, an engineering student.

• Segura

Among the various complaints against the former head of the comptroller general’s office (CGT), Nora Segura, the civil society group, Acción Ciudadana (AC), flags up her failure to respond to information requests. An AC report also accused Segura of nepotism and hiring relatives like her stepson, Manolo Hernández, to work in her office. Meanwhile the president of the congressional probity commission, Amílcar Pop, has said that the commission has presented the CGT with 18 requests to carry out audits, none of which received any response.