Otto Pérez Molina

Otto Pérez Molina (2013)

Otto Fernando Pérez Molina (born December 1, 1950 in Guatemala City ) is a Guatemalan ex- general and politician ( Partido Patriota ). In January 2012, Pérez took office as President of the Republic of Guatemala. A few months before the end of his term of office, he announced his resignation in September 2015 because of a corruption affair; the Guatemalan parliament had previously lifted its immunity.

Life

Otto Pérez was born the third son of Jaime Pérez Marroquín and Isabel Molina in Guatemala City. At the age of 16 he joined the Guatemalan armed forces as a cadet at the Escuela Politécnica officers' school . He later continued his military training at the School of the Americas in the Panama Canal Zone (1985) and at the Interamerican Defense College in Washington, DC . He graduated from INCAE Business School in Costa Rica and completed a Masters in International Relations from Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala.

Otto Pérez Molina is married to Rosa Leal, with whom he has two children: the former officer and current Mayor of Mixco , Otto Perez Leal , and Lisette Pérez de Solórzano.

Military career

After completing his training at the Escuela Politécnica, Pérez initially worked with the paratroopers in the departments of Petén and San Marcos and on the "Boca Costa", an area on the northern Pacific coast of Guatemala. This time was marked by the civil war .

He served as the beginning of the 1980 Major military operations in the majority of the Maya belonging Quiché inhabited same province name in charge. His unit is said to be responsible for several massacres, which Pérez denies.

In 1982 he took part in the coup of then Defense Minister Óscar Humberto Mejía Víctores against the head of state General Efraín Ríos Montt . Later, Pérez Molina headed the military intelligence service . On the occasion of the attempted self-coup by President Jorge Antonio Serrano Elias in 1993, Pérez sided with the Constitutional Court and thus contributed significantly to maintaining democratic order and Serrano resigning. In recognition of his attitude in this situation, Serranos appointed Ramiro de León's successor Carpio Pérez as head of the Presidential Guard (Estado Mayor Presidencial).

In 1996 he was appointed Inspector General of the Army. In this capacity he represented the Guatemalan armed forces in the peace negotiations with the guerrilla organization URNG in Oslo and was the only officer to sign all contracts up to and including the final peace treaty of December 29, 1996.

From 1998 to 2000 Pérez was head of the Guatemalan delegation to the Inter-American Defense Committee in Washington, DC In January 2000, Pérez left the armed forces at his own request in order to pursue a political career.

Political career

After retiring from the armed forces, Pérez initially worked as a columnist for the newspaper Prensa Libre and began to rally like-minded people for a political project. A year after he left the army, Pérez was assassinated, but he survived.

On February 24, 2001, he founded the conservative Patriotic Party (PP), and he was elected Secretary General. For the parliamentary elections in 2003, the PP joined forces with other political parties to form the Grand National Alliance ( GANA ), whose top candidate on the national list Pérez was elected to the Guatemalan parliament. There he was parliamentary group leader of his party in the following years. In 2007 he left parliament to run for president.

Otto Pérez Molina (2007)

In the 2007 presidential election , Pérez Molina ran for president. The entrepreneur Ricardo Castillo Sinibaldi accompanied him as a candidate for the vice-presidency . Pérez 'central election promise was the increased use of the army and police in the fight against the widespread crime in the country. He also wanted to make more use of the death penalty again. On November 4, he was defeated in the runoff election to succeed Óscar Berger Perdomo with 47 to 53% of the vote against his opponent Álvaro Colom Caballeros , who was thus the first Social Democrat to be elected President of Guatemala.

In the 2011 presidential election , Pérez Molina ran again, this time with former journalist and MP Roxana Baldetti as a candidate for the vice-presidency. In the first round he achieved 36.0%, the best result of the 10 presidential candidates allowed for election. On November 6th there was a runoff between him and the runner-up, the lawyer and entrepreneur Manuel Baldizón . Molina was elected to succeed Alvaro Colom with 53.7%. He took office on January 14, 2012.

The "La Línea" case

At the beginning of his fourth year in office, allegations of corruption against the administration of President Pérez Molina increased. On April 16, 2015, the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala ( Comisión Internacional contra la Impunidad en Guatemala , CICIG for short) and the Guatemalan Attorney General announced that they had established a network called "La Línea" within the Guatemalan Tax and Customs Administration ( Superintendencia de Administración Tributaria , or SAT for short), which is responsible for corruption and the embezzlement of customs revenue on a large scale. Head of this network, in which the incumbent and a former head of the SAT are also involved, is the private secretary of Vice President Baldetti, Juan Carlos Monzón . Monzón, who was in South Korea with Baldetti at the time, did not return to Guatemala, but went into hiding . From then on there were massive demonstrations demanding the resignation of Pérez and Baldetti and accusing them of being part of the corruption network themselves. On May 8, Vice-President Baldetti resigned and in her place the former Constitutional Court President Alejandro Maldonado Aguirre was elected by Parliament as the new Vice-President.

A good three months later, on August 21, 2015, Baldetti was arrested on suspicion of corruption. On the same day, the CICIG and the Attorney General's Office charged President Pérez with having been the head of the “La Línea” network since before his presidency , and asked him to resign. Pérez refused. As a result, on September 1, 2015, the Guatemalan parliament unanimously lifted the immunity of an incumbent president for the first time in its history , in order to clear the way for formal investigations by the public prosecutor and the CICIG against Pérez. Immediately after Parliament's decision, a court issued a ban on leaving the country at the request of the public prosecutor's office and, only one day later, issued an arrest warrant for Pérez. This then announced his resignation as President. Since September 4, 2015, Pérez has been in custody in a military prison in the Matamoros barracks in Guatemala City due to the risk of escape and blackout .

Crime allegations during and after the Civil War

Allegations of genocide and torture

Based on results from the US National Security Archive , in 2011 Pérez was accused of being responsible for a scorched earth policy under the dictator Efraín Ríos Montt in the 1980s. Pérez commanded counterinsurgency forces, which are said to have destroyed 80 to 90% of the villages in the Ixil in 1982 and 1983 . At least 184 civilians were killed or disappeared.

In July 2011, Waqib Kej, the indigenous peoples' advocacy group, presented a letter to the UN accusing Pérez of genocide and torture committed in the Quiché Department during the Guatemalan Civil War . One of the pieces of evidence presented is a video showing an officer next to four bodies. The organization claims that it is Pérez. In a following scene, a soldier says that the prisoners would be taken to the "Major" (allegedly Pérez) and that he would not ask them nicely .

Pérez disagreed with the account, saying he was proud of his role in the civil war.

Alleged involvement in the killing of Efraín Bámaca

In 1992 the guerrilla chief Efraín Bámaca Velásquez disappeared . Investigations by his wife, Jennifer Harbury , concluded that Pérez, who was director of military intelligence at the time, likely ordered the kidnapping and torture of Bámacas.

Hearings by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights revealed that the army captured Efraín Bámaca on March 12, 1992. He was held and tortured for over a year before he was murdered in September 1993 without a trial. His torturers and murderers were CIA informants. The chief prosecutor of Guatemala was investigating Pérez.

Alleged involvement in the killing of Bishop Juan Gerardi

In his book The Art of Political Murder , the US journalist Francisco Goldman claims that Pérez Molina was near the scene of the crime when Juan José Gerardi Conedera was on April 26, 1998, a few days after a report for the UN Historical Clarification was completed Commission was murdered. Gerardi was bishop of the diocese of Santa Cruz del Quiché from 1974 to 1984 and a fearless defender of human rights.

Awards

In 1993, Pérez was named one of the ten "Personalities of the Year" by the Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre for his commitment to saving the democratic order.

He was awarded the "Army Cross" (Cruz del Ejército de Guatemala), the highest distinction of the Guatemalan armed forces.

See also

• History of Guatemala

Web links

Commons : Otto Pérez Molina  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Guatemala elects ex-General Otto Pérez as president. In: Focus Online. November 7, 2011, accessed November 7, 2011 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Guatemala's President resigns. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. September 3, 2015, accessed September 3, 2015 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c} La carrera militar enseña responsabilidad. In: Siglo21. November 1, 2011, Retrieved November 8, 2011 (Spanish). 
4. ↑ Vicky Imerman: Notorious Guatemalan School of the Americas Graduates. Retrieved November 7, 2011 . 
5. ↑ ^{a b} Otto Pérez Molina, el general retirado que apuesta por “mano dura” para resolver los problemas. In: europapress.es. Retrieved November 7, 2011 (Spanish). 
6. ↑ Guatemala: Garbage dump of horror / On the way to the narco state. In: WochenZeitung. Retrieved November 7, 2011 . 
7. ↑ Cecibel Romero: A General for Guatemala. In: the daily newspaper. November 7, 2011, accessed November 7, 2011 . 
8. ↑ ^{a b c} Perez Molina becomes the new President of Guatemala. In: The time. November 7, 2011, accessed November 7, 2011 . 
9. ↑ In addition: James Dunkeley: Guatemala since 1930 . In: Leslie Bethell (Ed.): The Cambridge History of Latin America . Vol. 7: Latin America since 1930. Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990. ISBN 0-521-24518-4 . Pp. 211–249, here p. 248.
10. ↑ Peace treaties on the website of the Guatemalan parliament ( memento of the original from July 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
11. ^ Bullets overshadow Guatemala ballot. In: BBC News. September 8, 2007, accessed November 16, 2011 . 
12. ↑ Guatemala moves to the left. In: FAZ. November 5, 2007, accessed November 16, 2011 . 
13. ↑ Segunda Elección Presidencial - 2011. (No longer available online.) In: Website of the Guatemalan Electoral Court. Archived from the original on September 23, 2011 ; Retrieved November 16, 2011 (Spanish). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
14. ↑ Guatemala elects Otto Pérez Molina as president. In: NZZ. November 7, 2011, accessed November 8, 2011 . 
15. ↑ Corruption scandal culminates in the resignation of the Vice President. In: Focus on Latin America. May 11, 2015, accessed September 1, 2015 . 
16. ^ Congress lifts Pérez Molina's immunity. In: Handelsblatt. September 1, 2015, accessed September 1, 2015 . 
17. ↑ The President of Guatemala is no longer allowed to leave his country. In: FAZ. September 1, 2015, accessed September 1, 2015 . 
18. ^ Emily Willard: Otto Pérez Molina, Guatemalan President-Elect, with "Blood on his hands" . The National Security Archives. November 14, 2011. Retrieved January 16, 2012.
19. ^ ^{A b} Mica Rosenberg and Mike McDonald: New Guatemala leader faces questions about past . Reuters. November 11, 2011. Retrieved January 16, 2012.
20. ↑ Guatemala Human Rights Commission / USA: The Presidential Candidates - Otto Pérez Molina , accessed on May 13, 2014.
21. ↑ Democracy Now! : Allan Nairn Exposes Role of US and New Guatemalan President in Indigenous Massacres , accessed May 13, 2014.
22. ↑ Guatemala Human Rights Commission / USA: Allegation Letter sent to UN , accessed on May 13, 2014.
23. ^ Ian Bremmer: In Guatemala, troubles ahead and troubles behind . Foreign Policy. July 21, 2011. Archived from the original on July 26, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 23, 2011. 
24. ^ Asier Andrés: Harbury pide a relator de ONU que investigue a Pérez . El Periodico de Guatemala. July 7, 2011. Retrieved January 16, 2012.
25. ^ Francisco Goldman: The Art of Political Murder . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2011. ISBN 978-3-498-02507-6 . P. 372.
26. ↑ Democracy Now !: Youtube interview with Jennifer Harbury . Youtube. September 17, 2011. Retrieved September 17, 2011.
27. ↑ Amy Goodman: Genocide-Linked General Otto Pérez Molina Poised to Become Guatemala's Next President . Retrieved September 17, 2011.
28. ↑ Guatemala Human Rights Commission / USA: The Bamaca Case - an 18-year Struggle for Justice , accessed on May 13, 2014.
29. ^ Megan Hagler and Francisco Rivera: Bámaca Velásquez V. Guatemala: An Expansion of the Inter-American System's Jurisprudence on Reparations . American University, Washington College of Law. Human Rights Brief 9 (3). 2002. Archived from the original on December 28, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 16, 2012. 
30. ↑ Nicolas Casey: Raging Drug War Boosts Controversial Ex-General . Wall Street Journal. November 5, 2011. Retrieved January 16, 2012.
31. ^ Francisco Goldman: The Art of Political Murder . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2011. pp. 370–372.
32. ^ Francisco Goldman: The Art of Political Murder . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2011. pp. 13–40.

predecessor	Office	successor
Álvaro Colom Caballeros	President of Guatemala January 14, 2012–3. September 2015	Alejandro Maldonado Aguirre