About 5,000 protesters on Saturday night marched in downtown Guatemala City demanding the resignation of the country’s corruption-plagued president, who lost a fight for immunity from prosecution last week.
On Tuesday, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court rejected Guatemalan President Otto Perez’s appeal for presidential immunity that also sought to legally erase a pretrial investigation of graft allegations.
On Friday, a Guatemalan Congressional committee recommended fully lifting that immunity and allowing the investigation to proceed.
Photo: AFP
Protesters on Saturday shouted: “Out with Otto Perez” and “No more corruption” as they marched from the Guatemalan Supreme Court to the National Palace of Culture in the city’s historic center.
Holding candles and flaming torches, many carried multicolored banners with slogans such as: “With Otto Perez’s government, corruption and repression increase.”
“The president’s resignation is a starting point and would breathe fresh air into the situation. It would not resolve all the problems but would be a good way to move forward,” former Guatemalan minister of finance Juan Alberto Fuentes told reporters during the march.
The probe against Perez was requested by opposition party Winaq after a UN-backed investigation aimed at cleaning up the Guatemalan judicial system reported in April that senior customs officials had taken bribes from businesses seeking to avoid paying taxes.
The main suspect in the fraud, Juan Carlos Monzon, an aide to the vice president, is now a fugitive.
Former Guatemalan vice president Roxana Baldetti resigned from her post in May.
In another scandal, the central bank president of and the director of the social security system — both close to Perez — were arrested in May on charges of cheating the social security system out of approximately US$15 million.
“We live with much injustice in Guatemala; the governments are complicit in corruption,” Oscar Farfan, a 40-year-old protester who joined the march after walking 45km from the western indigenous town of Sumpango, told reporters.
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