Guatemala president won't resign, denies scandal involvement

[TexasTowelie]

GUATEMALA CITY -- President Otto Perez Molina says he won't resign from office despite investigators saying he may have been involved in a customs fraud scandal that has thrown the country into political crisis.

Perez denies receiving any money from the fraud ring and says his conscious is clear.

He also apologized late Sunday to Guatemalans for the corruption that has wracked his administration. Ex-Vice President Roxana Baldetti was detained Friday as a suspect, and government leaders resigned over the weekend to protest the scandal. Even business chambers normally supporting Perez Molina asked him to resign. Investigators are seeking to revoke the president's immunity from prosecution in the case.

The scandal involved kickbacks paid by businesspeople to avoid import duties and is believed to have defrauded the state of millions of dollars.

http://www.star-telegram.com/news/nation-world/world/article31998921.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Memory refresher, Otto Perez Molina's career in the military during the war upon indigenous people:

Guatemalan president accused of involvement in civil war atrocities

Former soldier tells trial that Otto Pérez Molina ordered soldiers to burn and pillage during 1980s war

Associated Press in Guatemala City
Friday 5 April 2013 03.40 EDT

A former soldier has implicated the Guatemalan president, Otto Pérez Molina, in civil war atrocities during the trial of the former US-backed military strongman Efraín Ríos Montt, proceedings that have heard witnesses recount a litany of horrors.

Hugo Reyes, a soldier who was a mechanic in an engineering brigade in the area where atrocities were carried out, told the court that Pérez Molina, then an army major, ordered soldiers to burn and pillage during Guatemala's dirty war with leftist guerrillas in the 1980s.

"The soldiers, on orders from Major 'Tito Arias', better known as Otto Pérez Molina … co-ordinated the burning and looting, in order to later execute people," Reyes told the court by video link.

Pérez Molina, who retired as a general, was elected president for the conservative Patriotic party and assumed office on 14 January 2012. As president, Pérez Molina is protected by an amnesty granted to public officials and cannot be subpoenaed.

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/apr/05/guatemalan-president-accused-civil-war

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Wikipedia:

. . .

Pérez is a graduate of Guatemala's National Military Academy (Escuela Politécnica),[5] the School of the Americas[6] and of the Inter-American Defense College.[7]

During his time in the Guatemalan Army he served in the special forces (known as the Kaibiles), which had a reputation for brutality; as Director of Military Intelligence; and as inspector-general of the army. In 1983 he was a member of the group of army officers who backed Defence Minister Óscar Mejía's coup d'état against de facto president Efraín Ríos Montt.

. . .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_P%C3%A9rez_Molina

[TexasTowelie]

2. Thank you,

I obviously defer to your expertise in this area of the world. I've forgotten almost all of the Spanish that I learned in college and was a true gringo when it came to rolling an "r".

[Judi Lynn]

3. No expertise here, believe me. I'm simply very, very interested after learning I knew nothing!

Doing my best to overcome what I never knew, and that was everything. I had no idea as a child and a teenager so much had been going on.

Started very late, but hope to learn more.

This guy is really strange, as anyone would be who worked for Ronald Reagan's genocidal flim-flam man, Efrain Rios-Montt, who made the offer to Guatemalan people, especially Mayan people to make a choice regarding "fusiles y frijoles" or "guns and beans."

When Perez Molina ran for office stories kept being mentioned of his atrocities in the war against the poor, but apparently the power structure was able to push him all the way to the Presidency, regardless.

It's so creepy these murderous right-wingers are able to hold onto power so long, isn't it?

You really do lose what Spanish you learned when you don't really get a chance to use it after school. I'm in the same boat with you on this!

[Judi Lynn]

4. Guatemala president step closer to impeachment

Guatemala president step closer to impeachment

Guatemala's Supreme Court has approved a bid to impeach the nation's president, who is facing a growing corruption scandal. Otto Perez Molina has refused to resign.

Date 26.08.2015

http://www.dw.com/image/0,,18493128_303,00.jpg

The court unanimously approved a request by Guatemala's attorney general to investigate Perez Molina (pictured above) over his suspected involvement in a racket to siphon customs revenue from the government.

The matter will be passed to the country's congress, which will vote on whether to strip Perez Molina of his immunity as a sitting president, so he can be prosecuted and possibly removed from office.

The president has angrily dismissed involvement in the scandal, in which importers avoided paying customs duties in exchange for bribes, which investigators say were distributed to officials.

. . .

Since last Friday, five of the president's 13 cabinet secretaries have resigned. Perez Molina himself on Sunday dismissed the allegations against him, and said in a televised address that he would not step down.

http://www.dw.com/en/guatemala-president-step-closer-to-impeachment/a-18672296

[bemildred]

5. He can't step down, there would be an investigation then. nt