September 1, 2015
Guatemala's Congress (click here) on Tuesday voted unanimously to strip President Otto Perez of immunity, paving the way for prosecutors to charge him in an unprecedented graft scandal that has engulfed his government.
Perez, a 64-year-old retired general, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and has said he will not resign over a scandal that has sent thousands of protesters onto the streets and gutted his cabinet.
But in a vote in Congress on Tuesday, Perez faced a serious blow as all 132 lawmakers present voted to remove his immunity, just days before a presidential election to be held on Sunday....
No surprise. The corruption involves the drug cartels.
March 23, 2012
Guatemala's Congress (click here) on Tuesday voted unanimously to strip President Otto Perez of immunity, paving the way for prosecutors to charge him in an unprecedented graft scandal that has engulfed his government.
Perez, a 64-year-old retired general, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and has said he will not resign over a scandal that has sent thousands of protesters onto the streets and gutted his cabinet.
But in a vote in Congress on Tuesday, Perez faced a serious blow as all 132 lawmakers present voted to remove his immunity, just days before a presidential election to be held on Sunday....
No surprise. The corruption involves the drug cartels.
March 23, 2012
The retired general (click here) said he would send troops into the streets to fight drug violence.
Analysts summed up his political platform with three words: law and order.
Now
-- just two months after taking office -- the 61-year-old Guatemalan
president is pushing a controversial proposal that has come under fire
from U.S. officials and earned praise from people who were once his
critics.
During a routine speech last month, Perez Molina slipped in a surprise announcement.
Last year's law-and-order candidate said he wanted to legalize drugs.
"What
I have done is put the issue back on the table," Perez Molina told CNN
en Español. "I think it is important for us to have other alternatives.
... We have to talk about decriminalization of the production, the
transit and, of course, the consumption."
The proposal caught many Guatemalans off guard.
"Everyone
was expecting him to copy the strategy of (Mexican President) Felipe
Calderon and involve the military in fighting cartels," said Martin
Rodriguez Pellecer, director of Plaza Publica, an investigative
journalism and analysis website in Guatemala. "Then he made this
surprise announcement ... without even his foreign minister knowing
about it."...
