GUATEMALA: Conditions Not Ripe for Coup, Analysts Say

• by Danilo Valladares (guatemala city)
• Thursday, July 23, 2009
• Inter Press Service

Since the Jun. 28 coup in which Zelaya was removed from his home at gunpoint by more than 100 troops and put on a plane to Costa Rica, the peace brokering efforts by Costa Rican President Óscar Arias have so far failed to find a compromise solution between the ousted leader and de facto President Roberto Micheletti, whose government faces total international isolation.

Zelaya immediately rejected a new compromise proposal set forth by Arias on Wednesday, and said he is planning to return to his country over the weekend, across one of the land borders.

The situation has led to warnings in other countries of Central America about the stability of democracy in this region, where democratic institutions are still weak after decades of dictatorship and civil war.

There have also been alarming statements by the left-wing presidents of Bolivia and Venezuela about supposed coup plots against the Guatemalan government of social democratic President Álvaro Colom.

During recent celebrations of the bicentennial of his country's independence from Spain, Bolivian President Evo Morales accused the 'Guatemalan oligarchy' of 'inventing a death' – an allusion to the May 10 murder of lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg.

'They killed him to accuse and remove Colom,' Morales said in a speech.

In an 18-minute interview taped a few days before Rosenberg’s death, he told a journalist that 'If at this moment you are hearing or watching this message, it is because Álvaro Colom had me killed.'

His subsequent murder and the broadcast of the video sparked demonstrations for and against Colom, triggering a serious political crisis for the government. The murder investigation, in which both the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) are taking part, is still ongoing.

At the time, Organisation of American States (OAS) Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza said Rosenberg's murder was 'part of a chain of events over the last months' linked to organised crime. The OAS gave Colom its full support, passing a resolution backing the Guatemalan government 'in its obligation to preserve the institutions of democracy and the rule of law.'

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, meanwhile, went even further than Morales, saying in a press conference that 'I understand that a coup is being planned against the president of Guatemala. They are trying to get members of the military to follow in Honduras' footsteps.'

In Guatemala, indigenous Nobel Peace Prize-winner Rigoberta Menchú warned that powerful economic interests could plot the overthrow of the centre-left Colom.

She said that became clear after Rosenberg was gunned down in the street and conservative sectors backed demonstrations, mainly by middle and upper-class Guatemalans, demanding that the president resign.

'Certain conditions in Honduras are also present in Guatemala, making such a thing possible,' Iduvina Hernández, the head of the non-governmental Association for the Study and Promotion of Security in Democracy (SEDEM), told IPS.

'There is an army trained according to the old national security doctrine used during the Cold War (throughout Latin America), and the resulting officialdom in practice contributes to the possibility of a coup,' she said.

Hernández also said the media in Guatemala are connected to conservative sectors and that the country's democratic institutions are weak, both of which contribute to a negative image of democracy.

But unlike in Honduras, 'the justice system and legislature in this country are not committed to a coup, which was the factor that gave the coup there a pseudo-legal façade,' she said.

Nevertheless, talk of the possibility of a coup in Guatemala is not completely outlandish. This violent, corrupt country was governed for decades by military dictatorships imposed by local economic power groups with U.S. backing.

Leftist guerrillas emerged in the 1960s, and it was not until 1996 that a peace accord put an end to a 36-year civil war that left 200,000 victims, mainly rural indigenous villagers, at least 90 percent of whom were killed by the army according to a U.N.-sponsored truth commission.

The country's first civilian president, Christian Democrat Vinicio Cerezo, was elected in 1986.

Frequent threats against and murders of human rights defenders as well as judges, prosecutors, journalists, activists, trade unionists and political leaders have been linked to clandestine armed groups, most of which are a holdover from the armed conflict, according to Adriana Beltran of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

'We believed that we had left behind coups d'etat, but today we realise that the armies are still quite capable of carrying out actions like these,' Renzo Rosal, assistant director of the Central American Institute of Political Studies (INCEP), told IPS.

The analyst did not completely rule out the possibility of a Honduras-like situation occurring in Guatemala.

But, he added, 'the conditions are not in place for that right now.'

Among other reasons, Rosal pointed to the fact that Colom has not tried to reform the constitution, as Zelaya wanted to do.

The Honduran leader's attempt to hold a non-binding referendum asking voters if they wanted to elect a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution precipitated a series of events that culminated in the Jun. 28 coup, justified by the claim that Zelaya was attempting to introduce the possibility of presidential reelection.

In Honduras, presidents cannot be elected to a second term, consecutive or otherwise. But Zelaya never stated that his intention was reelection, and his term was to end in January, too soon for any eventual reelection amendment to apply.

'Zelaya bought into Chávez's agenda, while Colom is still wavering,' said Rosal.

He was referring to Honduras' joining of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) bloc, led by Venezuela and also made up of Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

According to the analyst, the situation in Honduras 'has shown that the spectre of a military coup looms nearer than we had thought, that our constitutions have few mechanisms to deal with illegal acts committed by the president, and that international bodies like the OAS fall short in their capacity to prevent and deal with conflicts.'

Marta Altolaguirre, a former president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said the situation in Guatemala is very different from the situation in Honduras. 'I see neither the will nor the interest nor the popular support for a coup in Guatemala,' she said in an interview with IPS.

But she acknowledged that Guatemala's justice system is absolutely ineffective, and that the rule of law is weak. 'There is virtually no respect for the law, starting with the highest level authorities, but it makes no sense to try to rescue a failed state by means of a coup d'etat.

'The solution is not to change things by force; it's steady but accelerated progress towards strengthening the rule of law,' she said.

Altolaguirre said the lesson that should be learned from the crisis in Honduras is that respect for the rule of law is indispensable for achieving a truly 'civilised' society. 'First, the president (Zelaya) tried to bypass the legal system (which declared the non-binding referendum illegal), and then came the monumental mistake of failing to take legal action against him – a possibility that the constitution does provide for,' she said.

Even left-wing political leaders, who are among those who have suffered most under past military governments, see a coup in Guatemala as a distant prospect.

Miguel Ángel Sandoval, former presidential candidate for the alliance formed by the guerrilla-turned political party Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) and the leftist MAÍZ movement, told IPS that the conditions for a coup do not currently exist in this country.

'All sectors of society condemn any attempt at destabilisation and are calling for the strengthening of democratic procedures; this indicates that people aren't thinking about a coup, although there are always some who are nostalgic for the past and try to take advantage of any circumstances, knocking on doors in the barracks to see if they have any luck,' he said.

Sandoval said the Guatemalan army is now more focused on its 'institutional role,' and coups are globally rejected today, as seen by the reactions of international bodies like the OAS and the United Nations.

'Moreover, the government's popularity is on the rise, which dissuades any attempt at a coup,' he said. Colom's approval ratings recently rose from 44.8 to 46.2 percent, according to a survey carried out Jul. 4-10 by Vox Latina for the Prensa Libre newspaper.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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