Guatemala’s president, Bernardo Arévalo de León, announced this Sunday that he will present to Congress a legal reform that would allow the dismissal of the Attorney General, Consuelo Porras, who endangered his coming to power with questioned investigations.
“I have decided to present to the Congress of the Republic an initiative to reform the organic law of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which will open the way for the Attorney General to be held accountable […] and to be removed from office within the framework of the law,” Arévalo said in a message on radio and television, in the strongest measure against the questioned civil servant in almost 120 days in office.
The objective of the president’s decision is to change the law that currently prohibits the ruler or any official from removing the prosecutor, since the only way for that to happen is if the occupier is convicted in a legal process.
The dark cycle of Consuelo Porras must end now.
Bernardo Arévalo (BArevalodeLeon)May 6, 2024
Arévalo de León indicated that the reform of the law of the Public Prosecutor’s Office “preserves” the “autonomy” of the entity “at the same time that ensures an effective accountability mechanism so that no more a general prosecutor can abuse him with impunity that the people and the Constitution have entrusted him with impunity.”
The president will present the law reform in Congress and said it will be the responsibility of the 160 deputies of the legislative body to decide whether to validate or reject the proposal.
Guatemala’s law requires that the reform be validated with at least 106 votes. The Seed Movement, the official party, has 23 deputies and in the election of the presidency of Parliament last January, managed to obtain up to 92 votes from allied political groups.
In his speech this Sunday, the leader recalled that prosecutor Porras has ignored numerous investigations into corruption related to political figures, while incarnating and confined those who denounce corruption.
“The Public Prosecutor’s Office persecutes and imprisons those who denounce corruption, while aperpation and exonerates those who steal and scam the people,” he argued.
Porras has been at the head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office since 2018 and she and her team have been sanctioned by the United States in 2021 because they have “sockeyed justice” in the Central American country, according to the government led by Joe Biden.
According to several sources, the Attorney General is responsible for the attempts to prevent the investiture of Arévalo de León last January, as well as for the judicial prosecution of more than 100 people between prosecutors, judges and journalists, including communicator José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, who has been incarcerated since 2022.
Porras was re-elected two years ago by the ruler at that time, Alexander Giammattei, and his term ends in 2026.
This article has been translated from the original which first appeered in TeleSurTv