The Center for the Defense of the Constitution (CEDECON),
on the 35th Anniversary of Guatemala’s Constitution, Declares as Follows:
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- May 31, 2020, marked 35 years of the enactment of the Guatemalan Republic’s Constitution, an appropriate date to reflect and call on everyone to uphold and defend the constitutional order.
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- Respecting the constitutional order is essential to preserve the republican, democratic, and representative governance in Guatemala, and, by doing so, to keep fostering the rule of law.
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- This commemoration comes amid extraordinary circumstances, including a state of emergency and the suspension of constitutional guarantees as consequences of the health crisis provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic. Simultaneously, it comes amid the judicial branch’s abnormal extension of its mandate beyond the non-extendable period established by our Constitution.
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- The proper application of constitutional protections strengthens the rule of law, the democratic procedures, and the republican system. The Constitution’s protection mechanisms should not be manipulated or distorted for utilitarian, ideological, nor political reasons, for this provokes institutional crises and legal uncertainty. Distorting these mechanisms leads to scenarios that facilitate the manipulation of institutions and the imposition of de facto situations that fall outside the fundamental principles of a constitutional, law-based state in which individuals’ lives and implicit guarantees, as well as the people’s sovereignty, are upheld.
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- CEDECON, on the anniversary of the Constitution’s enactment, renews its commitment, derived from its statutes, to continue exposing actions by authorities that deviate from a constrained exercise of power, undermine the Guatemalan Constitution, and are contrary to the nation’s democratic institutionality.
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