Guatemalan government opponents on Monday submitted 35,000 signatures to demand that Congress start procedures to strip the president of immunity from prosecution over allegations that he ordered a lawyer killed.
Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom, the country’s first leftist president in more than 50 years, has faced mounting calls for his resignation since a recording distributed at Rodrigo Rosenberg’s funeral last week showed the attorney blaming his killing on the president.
Colom denies the accusations and has asked the FBI and a UN panel to investigate.
The process for stripping presidential immunity starts with the attorney-general, who decides whether there is enough evidence to open an investigation. Then he must ask Congress to lift the president’s immunity.
The petition asks Congress to pressure Guatemalan Attorney-General Amilcar Velasquez to start that process. The petitioners decided to go through Congress because they did not trust Velasquez — a Colom appointee — to act on his own, said Luis Pedro Alvarez, one of the lawyers who submitted the petition.
Colom allies hold enough legislative seats to block Congress from sending the petition to the attorney-general, however.
Alvarez warned that petition organizers would call for a national strike if Congress does not act within eight days.
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