Guatemalan Elections Unlikely To End Corruption, Violence
Feb 28, 2003 stratfor.biz 

Summary

Voters in Guatemala will elect a new president in November 2003. Septuagenarian former Gen. Efrain Rios Montt hopes to win his fifth and likely final campaign for the presidency. The corrupt bureaucrats, military officers and international drug traffickers who have made Guatemala's government one of the most corrupt in Latin America also hope Rios Montt will win, because they perceive -- probably correctly -- that he would be easy to manipulate in protecting their drug-related activities.

Analysis

Guatemala, one of the poorest and most violent countries in Latin America, is bucking a recent regional trend in presidential politics. While voters in other Latin American countries -- like Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela -- have elected populist leftists, and voters in Argentina appear to favor leftist candidates in elections scheduled for April 2003, the two principal contenders in Guatemala's November presidential elections are both from right-wing political parties.

The ruling Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) plans to run its leader, former army Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, who led a coup in 1982 and is now president of the country's national Congress. The opposition right-wing National Advance Party (PAN) likely will run former Guatemala City Mayor Oscar Berger, who lost the 1999 presidential election by a landslide to current President Alfonso Portillo.

The presidential campaign does not start legally until May 2003, but Rios Montt launched his campaign in January. He held a public rally in Guatemala City's central plaza before more than 20,000 supporters, including many members of the armed forces and paramilitary Civil Self-Defense Patrols (PAC). Rios Montt will have the support of both Portillo's government and the armed forces, since his son, Army Division Gen. Enrique Rios Sosa, likely will be named defense minister soon. However, he still faces an uphill climb for several reasons, including his health, age and low popularity among urban voters.

A recent poll showed that more than three-quarters of likely voters have a poor opinion of Rios Montt. But the FRG likely will concentrate Rios Montt's campaign in urban areas, where it has a strong following reinforced by the deadly threat of PAC forces to silence its critics and eliminate potential opponents. It also is likely that Rios Montt will run a messianic campaign of evangelical speeches peppered with biblical references, but without substantive policy content. However, despite Rios Montt's self-professed evangelical Christianity, if elected he likely would be president of one of the most corrupt governments in Latin America; Guatemala's institutions already have been infiltrated by international organized crime gangs working in partnership with military officers.

Senior Bush administration officials told a House of Representatives hearing in October 2002 that international drug traffickers have close ties to "the highest levels" of Portillo's government. On Jan. 31, 2003, the Bush administration also decertified Guatemala for not cooperating in the war on drugs. Until about three years ago, Guatemalan anti-drug police forces routinely seized more than 10 tons of cocaine annually. However, in the past couple of years, they have reported seizures of only 2 tons or less in a country that is the premier gateway for Colombian heroin and cocaine from Mexico into the United States.

Guatemala's decertification dashed its hopes of returning to international capital markets after years in isolation. Portillo pledged that a $700 million "Peace Bond" issue would fund long overdue commitments from the 1996 peace agreements that ended four decades of internal conflict in which about 200,000 Guatemalans were killed, mainly by the army. However, opposition critics said the money likely would have been used to back Rios Montt's campaign.

With decertification closing the door on the bond issue, Portillo likely will milk the government budget for resources to support Rios Montt's campaign. Portillo has proclaimed publicly that Rios Montt is his candidate, and the corrupt groups that control the government's institutions likely want someone just like Rios Montt in the presidency: a septuagenarian with health problems and the conviction that he is Guatemala's salvation.

However, Portillo will have to balance his support of Rios Montt with the need to maintain public order. The election isn't until November, and right now Portillo is up against a national public teachers strike that already has lasted more than a month.

Striking teachers have disrupted the country by occupying government offices, blocking major highways and border crossings, and creating human barricades at entrances to airports and seaports. On Feb. 26, striking teachers also seized a pumping station on the country's only oil pipeline, shutting down the entire pipeline for hours.

As the election season gains momentum, more social protests are likely, combined with an upsurge in violence. In fact, U.N. officials recently said that 2002 was the most violent year Guatemala had experienced since the 1996 peace accords were signed -- but added that 2003 likely would be worse.

Besides an escalation in political violence, Guatemala also is being overwhelmed by ordinary violent crime, with an average of 14 murders a day as of December 2002, according to the U.N. Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA). Aside from violence caused by organized Guatemalan crime gangs -- with multinational links to gangs in Colombia, Mexico and the United States -- clandestine groups have been attacking human rights activists, judges, opposition leaders and forensic anthropologists investigating war atrocities committed mainly by the armed forces.

If Rios Montt were elected president, he likely would end any serious investigations of human rights crimes committed during the war years, but he would not be able to stop government corruption and break up entrenched networks of corrupt bureaucrats, military officers and international drug traffickers that for more than a decade have used Guatemala as a major hub in their distribution networks into the United States. It is also very possible that Rios Montt would not live to complete his five-year term.