Bernardo Arevalo calls his executioner, Prosecutor Consuelo Porras, to account for his interrogated management in Guatemala.

One of the first decisions Bernardo Arevalo made after taking office as president of Guatemala was to invite his executioner to his office: Attorney General Consuelo Porras, who until the end tried to derail the inauguration of the progressive professor and his political group. Movement. The officer has been summoned to the office of the President next Wednesday, January 24, to present a detailed report on various issues during his tenure at the head of the public ministry in question.

Last September, amid torpedoes by the prosecutor’s office to block his promotion, Arevalo accused Porras of attempting a “coup”. At the same time, weeks before his inauguration, the current president said he would seek his resignation. However, it will not be an easy task.

According to a ruling by the Constitutional Court, Guatemala’s highest court, Porras can only be removed from his post as attorney general if he has been previously convicted. Togados rejected requests seeking to open the way for the dismissal of the attorney general, which was approved by the United States in May 2022 “due to his participation in significant acts of corruption”.

But Porras also ordered arrest warrants against the judges of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and the confiscation of boxes containing documents from the June 25 and August 20 elections, following repeated attempts to annul the political party Movimiento Semilla. Over the past three months, thousands of indigenous people from across Guatemala have staged a nonstop sit-in in front of the headquarters of the prosecutor’s office in the Central American country’s capital, “demanding the resignation of Porras for attempting a boycott. Will express popularity at the polls.”

President Arevalo asked Porras to report on his criteria for criminal prosecution in cases of freedom of expression, the most notable of which is journalist José Ruben Zamora, who has been arrested since July 2022. The President also made the demand in a letter sent to the Prosecutor General. Investigating anomalies in procurement of Kovid-19 vaccine. At the same time, it asked the Prosecutor’s Office to report on progress in criminal proceedings linked to decisions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR). For now, Porras’ reaction to Arevalo’s call is unknown.

Congress is in limbo

Another front the Semilla movement is keeping open is in the Guatemalan Congress: deputies will once again elect the president of the chamber, mandated by the Constitutional Court. Samuel Pérez Alvarez, from the Semilla movement and elected after a long day of tension on Sunday, January 14, will leave his seat for a new vote, the date of which has not been set. “We are not going to enter into a harsh war. The Constitutional Court will not agree with us, even if we have, because its objective is to attack popular sovereignty,” Pérez asserted. “To preserve the country’s governance and promote the legislative agenda, while maintaining the agreements we made with the majority in Congress. are going to step down from our two positions on the board of directors.”

This Wednesday, the Constitutional Court provisionally accepted several legal appeals against the election of a new Board of Directors of the Congress chaired by Pérez. The court indicated in a statement that it had upheld the appeal filed by Representative Sandra Jowell, who lost the Congress presidential race on Sunday. Jowell maintains that the Semilla Movement deputies have been legally suspended.

The suspension of the Semilla Movement deputies, according to Jowell, stemmed from a July 12 criminal order issued by Judge Freddy Orellana, accused by the United States Department of State of undermining justice and corruption. The criminal case led by Orellana is due to the alleged crime of false signatures in the establishment of the Semilla movement in 2018, which Arevalo himself reported in the first half of 2023.

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