This Monday, April 29, at a press conference, the president of Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo, confirmed that they are analyzing holding a popular consultation to define the future of Consuelo Porras as attorney general of the Republic and head of the Public Ministry (MP).
Residents of Cobán, Alta Verapaz, have already expressed their intention to support an action of this nature to force the departure of Porras from the Public Ministry (MP), whom they accuse of undermining the country’s democracy.
This would be an unprecedented fact for a head of the MP, among the 10 people who have preceded Porras Argueta, who is the fourth woman to occupy the position of attorney general.
Porras Argueta was appointed in 2018, sworn in by Jimmy Morales, in his first term and then, for a second term, by Alejandro Giammattei.
“The popular consultation is an option that we are considering within the framework of the different legal actions that we have mentioned, to free the MP from the political, economic and legal network that currently has him under control,” Arévalo stated.
In 2016, the Organic Law of the MP was modified so that the presidential figure could not remove whoever was in charge of the investigative entity.
The attorney general, Consuelo Porras, assured Prensa Libre and Guatevisión this April 29 that she will not resign from the position because she has done her job well.
The other queries
In the country, since the democratic era, in the mid-1980s to date, three consultations have been carried out. Guatemalans have gone to the polls in 1994, 1999 and 2018, for reasons that have nothing to do with the General Elections.
Two of the three consultations involved reforming the Constitution and the other deciding on the dispute with Belize. The first Consultation was in 1994 and there was an absenteeism of 85%, with a participation of 637 thousand voters.
This had its origin in the coup d’état of May 25, 1993, known as the Serranazowhen President Jorge Serrano Elías suppressed Congress and the Supreme Court of Justice, after describing the members of those organizations as corrupt and blackmailers, according to the Newspaper Archive of Free Press.
Days after taking office as president, Ramiro de León Carpio promised a purge of the Legislative and Judicial Branch. Given this, he tried to raise a consultation on November 28, 1993, but legal actions by deputies interrupted it.
The crisis continued for several weeks, until the Episcopal Conference of Guatemala, which acted as mediator, achieved consensus between deputies and government representatives to call for a consultation on the constitutional reforms.
The consultation with the population would be to say YES or NO to the reform of 37 precepts of the Constitution and the approval of five transitional articles, among which was the reduction of the presidential term to four years, eliminating confidential expenses, purging the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) and the election of new deputies.
The president of León Carpio campaigned for Yes in large popular rallies as a measure to end corruption in Congress and the CSJ.
Won he does
The result of the Popular Consultation was that Guatemalans gave their support to the constitutional reforms. However, abstentionism was the big winner with 85 percent, the highest in political history.
The Yes obtained more than 637 thousand votes, for its part the No obtained 105 thousand, this meant that the constitutional reforms would come into force from April 1994, in addition to the fact that elections would be called to elect new deputies to Congress in August.
The second query
This popular consultation was on May 16, 1999 and was also to reform the Constitution.
The reform project was promoted by President Álvaro Arzú, who in 1996 had been one of the signatories of the Peace Accords and who also attracted interest from the National Advancement Party, which promoted Óscar Berger for the 1999 Elections.
Also, Alfonso Portillo, of the Guatemalan Republican Front, supported the reforms. Together with both presidential candidates, the University of San Carlos and union groups moved.
Although Arzú defended the project, the No won in 12 electoral districts and the Yes in 10. The vote in the capital was decisive in scrapping the project.
During the years 1997 and 1998, the Congress and multiple instances of Civil Society, after multiple sessions and discrepancies between political parties and the participants, achieved 50 constitutional reforms, divided as follows: Nation and Social Rights, Legislative Body, Executive Body, Judicial Body and Administration of Justice.
The TSE called the population to a Popular Consultation on March 1, 1999, defining the ballots where the reforms to be carried out were divided.
For him Yeah
The Yes position is the one that seemed to have the most support in the different sectors of the country. The political parties PAN and FRG were the ones who proselytized through their presidential candidates Óscar Berger and Alfonso Portillo.
The URNG, the Front for Yes, headed by the former president of CACIF, Luis Reyes Mayén, Mayan Groups, Cooperatives, the University of San Carlos, the Union and Popular Action Unit and the Civil Society Assembly joined.
For the No
Despite the intense Yes campaign, the No campaign gained strength in recent weeks. The ARDE party led by its candidate Francisco Bianchi, linked to the most conservative sectors, joined by the leadership of CACIF, the Pro-Patria League and Cedecon, Friends of the Country and sectors of the Evangelical Church.
The fear of the TSE was that in the end abstentionism would represent a high percentage, due to the skepticism and misinformation of a large part of the population and the polarization of the different sectors due to the ideological differences that dragged the proposals to the constitutional reforms.
Those who opposed the No feared that the recognition of the Mayan peoples would divide the country, granting them privileges over the Ladinos, to mention one of the reasons for the refusal.
The vote
The TSE prepared the registry that counted 4.8 million Guatemalans eligible to vote; 6,971 voting stations installed in the 330 municipalities and 1,234 vote receiving boards. Another notable fact is the participation of 70 international observers.
Results
The big winner of the consultation was abstentionism, 81.45%, only 757 thousand 940 voters participated, 18.55% of the registry. A minimum of 20% participation was expected according to the TSE. No to all reforms won the consultation.
Despite the results, the peace agreements are valid by themselves, and serve as a mandatory quote in any discussion about major national problems. Almost twenty years after that failed consultation, no other massive comprehensive constitutional reform has been proposed.
The Belize dispute
On April 15, 2018, almost 96 percent of Guatemalans voted yes in the popular consultation on the territorial, insular and maritime dispute with Belize, thereby giving endorsement by the country for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) intervene and give a final ruling on the dispute.
Abstention was 73.67 percent – participation was 26.33 percent – with 99.15 percent of vote receiving tables counted.
However, these figures exceed previous popular consultations. That of the constitutional reforms of 1994 was 85 percent, and that of the Peace Agreements, in 1999, was 81.45 percent.
Guatemala claims about 11,030 square kilometers of territory from Belize, as well as hundreds of islands and islets. The dispute dates back to 1783, when Spain gave those territories in concession to England to exploit wood.
In 2008, Guatemala and Belize agreed to go to the International Court of Justice to end the more than two-century-old controversy. Guatemala took the first step with the consultation.
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