Obama’s Ambassador Plays Caligula South of the Border
When one country sends an ambassador to another, it is first and last a recognition of sovereignty.
When one country sends an ambassador to another, it is first and last a recognition of sovereignty.
On March 29, US Secretary of State John Kerry, in a State Department ceremony, conferred one of its International Women of Courage awards on Guatemala’s attorney general, Thelma Aldana.
More than a year after resigning as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton telephoned the president of Guatemala and urged him to reappoint a cabinet official who the country’s legally established nominating commission had voted down.
A number of US observers, including retired military and intelligence officers, have raised the question. They assert that Obama’s policy — carried out by the US embassy, by two secretaries of state, and by the first lady herself — embodies the crime of treason.
In case you didn’t know, Guatemala went through a wrenching year in 2015. Its leaders were deposed and imprisoned on corruption charges. As the Organization of American States and others clearly saw, the literal decapitation of society was part of an attempt to cancel the country’s elections.
Under pressure from the Barack Obama administration, it will re-start the trial of former President Efraín Ríos Montt, and thereby attempt to blame the country’s misfortunes on a non-existent genocide.
All corruption, as Julius Caesar could have written, is divided into three parts. The first of these is the corruption itself, while the other two are the possible ways of redressing it.
At the end of November, a curious report appeared in a Guatemalan newspaper. US Ambassador Todd Robinson announced that he intended to seek a commitment from President-elect Jimmy Morales.
Guatemala’s political mob, which we call the blob, is once again trying to suffocate the country’s new government even before it takes power.
Guatemala’s recent presidential election was far from ordinary. It was shaped by a joint effort between the Barack Obama administration and the United Nations’ self-appointed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) to change the country’s governing structure.
From his prison cell, Otto Pérez Molina has played cry-baby by telling Russia Today — an odd bedfellow indeed — that the agent of his downfall was none other than the United States, up to its old tricks; and working in this case through the UN commission, the CICIG, a worthy partner in official corruption.
In her first round of presidential voting on September 6, Guatemala narrowly avoided a coup d’état which would have cancelled elections and kept them cancelled for a long time.
Guatemala’s congress last night voted to strip President Otto Pérez Molina of his official immunity from charges of involvement in a bribery ring. His former vice president, Roxana Baldetti, is already in prison, where she is awaiting trial on similar charges.
In October 2014, the staff of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security sat down for an interview with their “distinguished scholar in residence,” Claudia Paz y Paz. Five months earlier, Paz y Paz had left the post of attorney general for Guatemala after failing to win reappointment.
A few weeks after the attempted assassination of Gilda Aguilar in 2012, a co-author of these articles, Steve Hecht, was invited to meet with Arnold Chacon, the US ambassador to Guatemala. Hecht went to the meeting alongside Professor Armando De la Torre, a dean at Francisco Marroquín University and a columnist for Guatemala’s El Periódico.
If you want insights into the history of Claudia Paz y Paz, former attorney general of Guatemala (2010-2014), and what she symbolizes, look no further than the recent six-part series of reports from Steve Hecht and David Landau.
Gilda Aguilar, a prosecuting attorney for Guatemala’s Justice Ministry, was hurrying home to her two teenage daughters. Another attorney, a friend of Gilda’s, was driving; and Samuel Gonzales, a young police officer, was her security.
In Guatemala, the Justice Ministry and its leader, the attorney general, have a separate place in the constitutional order. For one thing, the attorney general’s term does not coincide with the president’s. The president takes office on January 14 of every year divisible by four (2004, 2008, 2012, etc.); while the attorney general takes office two years later, on May 15.
“Georgetown University is one of the world’s leading academic and research institutions.” That’s how the university describes itself.
But Georgetown’s use of its prestige to elevate Guatemala’s former attorney general, Claudia Paz y Paz, to star status raises questions about the direction the university has taken.
Guatemala’s congress last night voted to strip President Otto Pérez Molina of his official immunity from charges of involvement in a bribery ring. His former vice president, Roxana Baldetti, is already in prison, where she is awaiting trial on similar charges.