HomeNewsBriefDecision to Dissolve Guatemala President's Party Rocks Government
BRIEF

Decision to Dissolve Guatemala President's Party Rocks Government

ELITES AND CRIME / 15 JUN 2018 BY FELIPE PUERTA EN

Guatemala’s electoral court issued a resolution to begin the dissolution of the governing political party in what will be a litmus test for the country’s institutions and could leave President Jimmy Morales without a means to sustain his troubled political career.

Supreme Electoral Tribunal (Tribunal Supremo Electoral – TSE) spokesman Luis Ramírez announced the unanimous decision of the court’s judges to order Guatemala’s Civil Registrar to begin the process of suspending the National Convergence Front (Frente de Convergencia Nacional – FCN-Nación) for its use of anonymous contributions during the 2015 electoral campaign.

In April, the electoral crimes division of the Attorney General’s Office announced that it would petition the TSE to freeze the political activities of the FCN-Nación because it had received at least $2 million in illicit campaign financing, according to recent allegations from former Attorney General Thelma Aldana and a United Nations-backed judicial support organ known as the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (Comisión Internacional contra la Impunidad en Guatemala – CICIG).

At least half of that money was allegedly intended to pay for election observers, which are funded by political parties in Guatemala. Some of the most prominent businesspeople in the country provided the funds, which were channeled through the company Novaservicios S.A. and were not registered in the party’s accounts, nor were they reported as a campaign expense.

SEE ALSO: Guatemala News and Profile

Instead, the FCN-Nación only reported 103,706 quetzales (approximately $13,800) were used to pay the election observers, while the investigations revealed that some 8 million quetzales ($1,075,000) were actually spent -- $500,000 in the first round of elections and another $575,000 in the second.

Businesspeople involved in the case testified that Morales suggested they make the contributions anonymously because FCN-Nación could not report any more income to the TSE. The Attorney General’s Office and the CICIG have corroborated their testimony.

InSight Crime Analysis

Although there may be significant institutional pressure from the TSE’s unanimous decision and growing evidence of illicit campaign contributions -- thanks in part to the people who made them -- this is not the first time President Morales has seemed so close to being prosecuted.

In September 2017, in the midst of a struggle by the Attorney General's Office and the CICIG to push forward with an investigation into alleged campaign finance violations involving Morales, Congress voted to protect the president by preserving his legal immunity.

In October of the same year, the Supreme Court rejected another request for a preliminary hearing against Morales for allegedly receiving monthly payments of just over $6,600 from the Defense Ministry.

Despite attempts to pursue him, Morales has so far eluded judicial authorities, making it difficult to assess how the latest move could affect his administration.

The decision on whether to suspend the party that brought Morales to the presidency will rest in the hands of the Civil Registrar. But Director Leopoldo Armando Guerra Juárez is close to the military circles that supported the president, and he has benefitted from both Morales and FCN-Nación in the past.

As former Guatemalan Attorney General Thelma Aldana said before completing her term a few months ago, despite previous setbacks, the likelihood of a preliminary hearing against the president continues to grow and has not been ruled out by her successor María Consuelo Porras. However, current Attorney General Porras still has not made a public statement about the TSE’s recent decision.

The general secretary of FCN-Nación has indicated that if the party’s suspension goes forward, it will become more difficult to reach agreements with Congress because, according to him, more than 30 representatives would have to declare themselves as “independents.” FCN-Nación also announced it would take legal action to reverse the TSE decision and accused its judges of being “criminals.”

The growing possibility of Morales’ political party being suspended -- especially given how much Congress has fought to prevent that from happening -- represents a serious blow, not only to his already dwindling political capital but also the legitimacy of his questionable administration.

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

COLOMBIA / 14 DEC 2021

Prosecutors in Colombia have dismissed a criminal libel case filed by accused paramilitary drug lord Guillermo León Acevedo Giraldo, alias…

CONTRABAND / 6 JUL 2023

Illegal mining in Venezuela's Yapacana National Park has produced a parallel contraband economy to grow. And state actors know all…

CARIBBEAN / 23 MAR 2023

High-ranking officials from the former government of President Danilo Medina in the Dominican Republic continue to fall.

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Contributes Expertise Across the Board 

22 SEP 2023

This week InSight Crime investigators Sara García and María Fernanda Ramírez led a discussion of the challenges posed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan within urban contexts. The…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…