GUATEMALA:
Ex-Dictator on Rocky Road to Congress - and Immunity
Inés Benítez

GUATEMALA CITY,  (IPS) - The race against the clock to keep former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt from returning to parliament ends Thursday. The decision to accept the registration of his candidacy, despite an international arrest warrant out for him, has caused indignation within and outside the country's borders.

Political parties, organisations or individuals had between Tuesday and Thursday to file a legal challenge to Ríos Montt's candidacy before the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE), to keep the 80-year-old retired general, who faces legal charges in both Spain and Guatemala for crimes against humanity, from running for Congress in the Sept. 9 general elections.

If no one presents a challenge before the TSE, which is what will happen according to the sources consulted by IPS, the retired general will be allowed to stand in the elections and will enjoy immunity from prosecution as a legislator that can only be struck down by the Supreme Court of Justice.

And if, as expected, he takes part in the elections, he is guaranteed a seat, because he heads the list of parliamentary candidates of the right-wing Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), the second-largest party in Congress.

Local and international human rights groups and even U.S. lawmakers expressed concern as soon as Ríos Montt's decision to run for Congress was announced.

The retired general and evangelical preacher ruled Guatemala from March 1982 to August 1983, considered the bloodiest period of a civil war that lasted from 1960 to 1996.

Ríos Montt said in a recent press conference that he and his party would celebrate the acceptance of his candidacy in a "fiestecilla" (little party) in the Plaza de la Constitución, a square in central Guatemala City.

He also pointed out that he lacked immunity from prosecution for four years, after quitting Congress to run for president in 2003 (he came in third), saying that "I was available for four years, and if the others are useless and failed to take legal action, that's their problem."

"It is ethically deplorable that the state has not taken measures to keep people accused of these kinds of crimes from running for public posts," Benito Morales, a lawyer with the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation (FRMT), told IPS.

Morales said the former dictator is being allowed to run because he enjoys the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

The FRMT, named for Guatemalan indigenous activist Rigoberta Menchú, winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, brought a lawsuit against Ríos Montt in a court in Spain in 1999, accusing him of genocide, torture, state terrorism and other crimes against humanity.

In July 2006, the Spanish court issued an international arrest warrant for Ríos Montt, seeking his extradition and that of seven other former military and civilian officials from his de facto administration, who have also been accused by Menchú.

At the same time, the retired general is facing legal action in two Guatemalan courts for crimes committed during his rule.

Under the scorched earth counterinsurgency policy applied in the early 1980s, some 440 rural indigenous villages were completely destroyed in Guatemala, along with all of their inhabitants, by the security forces and the roughly 50,000 members of the paramilitary "civil defence patrols" armed by the military.

In the 36-year armed conflict, more than 200,000 people were killed, mainly rural indigenous people in the western provinces of Quiché and Huehuetenango, who the army considered to be the support base of the leftist guerrillas.

After the 1996 peace agreement was signed, Ríos Montt continued to lead the FRG.

He has not been arrested because the extradition process "is stuck" in the courts, even though all legal avenues have already been exhausted, said Morales.

If Ríos Montt's candidacy is confirmed, the prosecutions against him will basically be brought to a halt during the campaign and his four years in the legislature, Otto Navarro, legal adviser to the Centre for Legal Action on Human Rights (CALDH), told IPS.

An official at the Registry of Citizens told IPS that Ríos Montt was allowed to register as a candidate because "all of the legal requisites were fulfilled."

But "Even if his registration does meet the legal requirements, it makes no sense for such a highly respected body as the TSE to admit his candidacy when he is facing international legal action," said Mario Polanco, director of the Mutual Support Group, a local human rights organisation, who described the registration of the former dictator's candidacy as a "step backwards" and a show of weakness of the democratic system.

Luís Rosales, an FRG legal representative, argued in response to a query from IPS that Ríos Montt "is exercising his political rights." He added that his party was "prepared to defend" the retired general's candidacy from any eventual "groundless" legal challenges.

The director of the Institute of Comparative Studies in Penal Science in Guatemala, Claudia Paz y Paz, described Ríos Montt as a "fugitive from justice" and argued that "people facing legal charges are not suitable or apt for holding public posts."

Paz y Paz expressed to IPS her concern over "the slow pace of the justice system," pointing out that the cases against the elderly former dictator "have hardly moved forward at all in seven years."

"Ríos Montt is seeking a seat in parliament to maintain immunity, which translates into impunity," Diego de León, in charge of political affairs in the Myrna Mack Foundation, a human rights organisation, remarked to IPS.

De León noted that the FRG is a key actor on the national political scene, holding a large number of seats in the single-chamber Congress -- 43 out of 158 -- and often playing a decisive role in terms of political decisions.

The return to Congress of Ríos Montt, the secretary general of the FRG, is a "very important element to consider with respect to the action of the legislature over the next four years," he warned.

On Apr. 27, 31 U.S. lawmakers urged Guatemala's attorney-general to prevent the former dictator from registering as a candidate.

CALDH director Edda Gaviola told IPS that "this candidacy is an international disgrace," and lamented that the retired general was "playing with the justice system to ensure his immunity."

Ríos Montt seized power in a 1982 coup, overthrowing General Romeo Lucas García. He was later elected to Congress several times between 1990 and 2004, and was even president of the legislature in his last four years as a lawmaker.

In 2003, the Supreme Court banned him from running for president because he had carried out a coup. But after his supporters ran amok in Guatemala City for two days, the Constitutional Court overturned the Supreme Court decision, and he stood in the elections.