Caribbean & Central America - August 2016 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Last month President Jimmy Morales marked the first six months since his small, conservative Frente de Convergencia Nacional (FCN-Nación) government took office. He cited as one of his biggest achievements, efforts to contain spending, which he claimed had produced over Q$1.2bn (US$158m) in savings which were then reinvested in priority areas of health, education and security. His claims of progress were nonetheless overshadowed by protests by public sector workers as well as more signs of cabinet instability.

In a general address to the nation on 14 July, President Morales cited various achievements by his FCN-Nación government. As regards security, where he recently announced that the military would continue to support the police (PNC) in domestic security tasks, he claimed that the authorities had dismantled 43 criminal gangs and arrested 429 suspected delinquents responsible for assassinations and extortions. While failing to provide absolute figures, he also said that there were 212 less cases of shoplifting and motorcycle theft and 70 less cases of vehicle theft compared with the first half of 2015. In June, President Morales had pointed to a report by the independent human-rights NGO Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo (GAM) which showed that homicides in the first five months of 2016 reached 2,250 – down 5.1% on the same period in 2015.

As regards future security priorities, he highlighted the need for prison reform – an issue which made headlines following a shoot-out in El Pavón prison (see sidebar). Specifically, President Morales announced plans to open three new prisons in the country, which currently has 22 prisons with a total capacity of 6,000 detainees (although the current population exceeds 20,000). The new prisons will be located in Villa Nueva and Amatitlán, with the location of the third to be confirmed.

As regards education, President Morales claimed that his government has invested Q$677.3m in school meals, school supplies, and scholarships, benefitting a total of 5.8m children. In terms of health – which last year the human rights ombudsman declared to be in an unprecedented state of crisis – some Q$11.8m has been spent on paying delayed salaries to resident doctors, medical supplies, and reactivating outpatients’ services in 13 hospitals, which has had a direct impact on six million people. More generally, in his address to the nation, President Morales claimed that while when he took office provision of medical and surgical equipment nationwide was at just 55%, this had now increased to 72.37%. With Health Minister Alfonso Cabrera having since quit (see box) – indicative of the challenges facing the portfolio – President Morales remains under pressure to address these crises in the face of protests from public sector workers (see sidebar).

More resignations

Cabrera announced his resignation on 20 July, less than a month after Rodolfo Zea, a deputy health minister, announced he was quitting, on 30 June. Cabrera cited “personal reasons” but the local press was quick to note that the 158-member unicameral legislature was planning to summon him for questioning in relation to his failure to address the health crisis.

Cabrera becomes Morales’ third minister to step down since his government took office. In January, Communications and Infrastructure minister Sherry Ordóñez quit after just 11 days in the job over an alleged conflict of interest [RC-16-02]. Four months later, Energy and Mining (MEM) minister Juan Pelayo Castañón, stepped down – a move linked by the local media to a dispute over the ‘El Tambor’ gold mine.

Morales has since named Lucrecia Hernández Mack as Cabrera’s replacement, an appointment which has been very well received: she is the daughter of Myrna Mack, a local anthropologist murdered by the military in 1990 for her exposure of atrocities committed during the 1960-1996 civil war. A trained doctor, Hernández served as a consultant for the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) in Guatemala; she teaches at the private Universidad Rafael Landívar (URL) and has been active in the anti-corruption protests that have taken place in the past few months. These were in response to the massive government corruption scandals uncovered by the United Nations-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (Cicig) and the attorney general’s office (AG) which ultimately forced former president Otto Pérez Molina (Partido Patriota [PP], 2012-2015) and his vice-president, Roxana Baldetti, to stand down.

Líder loses legal status

On 25 July, Guatemala’s supreme electoral court (TSE) canceled the status of opposition party, Libertad Democrática Renovada (Líder), which had fielded its founder, populist businessman Manuel Baldizón in the 2015 general elections. (Baldizón has since quit politics after coming a narrow third.) By way of explanation, TSE president Mario Valenzuela said that Líder had exceeded the Q$58.2m campaign spending limit by more than Q$1.5m. The TSE’s decision came 11 days after Mirador Electoral, a group of civil-society organisations, presented the TSE with its report on the election.

The legislative presence of Líder – which was set up in 2010 by Baldizón, who split from the Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE) party of former president Alvaro Colom (2008-2012) – has shrunk considerably since President Morales assumed power, once again indicative of the widespread practice of ‘transfugismo’ (legislators switching parties). At the time of Valenzuela’s announcement, the party had just four seats in congress – down from the 20 it won in the 2015 general elections. Meanwhile Morales’ FCN-Nación won ten seats in the elections but now has 37, ahead of the UNE which has 31 (down from 47).

As well as highlighting local parties’ perennial lack of respect for electoral legislation, the TSE’s ruling against Líder comes as the issue of campaign finance has remained firmly in the spotlight following reports of the “macro-criminal structure that had co-opted power” revealed in June which was allegedly headed up by Pérez Molina and Baldetti [RC-16-06].

• Shootout in El Pavón

On 18 July, a fight broke out in El Pavón prison, which resulted in 14 deaths – including that of (Ret) General Byron Lima Oliva, widely considered one of the country’s most powerful imprisoned figures. Lima was convicted in 2001 for the 1998 death of Bishop Juan Gerardi, the head of the local Roman Catholic Church’s human rights office (Odhag), murdered two days after the release of a report accusing the military of atrocities committed during the 1960-1996 civil war. While the interior ministry initially attributed the incident to a power struggle between rival groups of prisoners for control of the prison, investigative daily El Periódico cited Lima’s brother, Luis Alberto Lima Oliva, as describing it as a “state crime”, claiming that “sources from the executive” had informed him ten days earlier of a plan to assassinate his brother.

• Protests

On 14 July, several thousand demonstrators took to the streets in Guatemala City in protests called by the powerful teachers’ union, Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Educación de Guatemala (Steg) and other unions like Asamblea Nacional del Magisterio (ANM) and the umbrella Frente Nacional de Lucha (FNL), over demands for more spending on education and better public services. The previous day, health care workers, led by the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de Salud de Guatemala (SNTSG), similarly held protests both in the capital and across the country, including the departments of El Progreso, Retalhuleu, San Marcos, Petén, Zacapa, and Jutiapa, calling for the government to address the health sector crisis.