GUATEMALA: Conditions Not Ripe for Coup,
Analysts Say
By Danilo
Valladares
GUATEMALA CITY (IPS) - The overthrow
of the government of Manuel Zelaya in
Honduras revived fears of something similar
happening in neighbouring Guatemala,
although analysts, political leaders and
social activists do not see it as likely.
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. |
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