Murder in Guatemala linked to President Alvaro Colom
Turning to news from the region, there is trouble brewing in neighbouring Guatemala that can have a debilitating effect on the government of President Alvaro Colom. According to reports some thirty thousand persons have signed petitions calling on the president to step down and the capital has been plagued by several demonstrations staged against Colom. This follows allegations against the president and his close allies linking him to the murder of a prominent Guatemalan lawyer, Rodrigo Rosenberg. A video, recorded by Rosenberg before his death, was released one week ago at his wake, claiming he was murdered because he represented Khalil Musa and his daughter. According to Rosenberg, Musa was killed because, as a member of the board of Guatemala’s Rural Development Bank, he found out about gross illicit transactions and refused to be a part of it. The government is the majority shareholder in the bank and the allegations include money laundering, embezzlement of public funds, financing front companies operated by drug traffickers and even funding nonexistent programs. As Musa’s lawyer, Rosenberg was allegedly provided with the details of those transactions and in the video, aired posthumously, he claimed that Musa’s murder was the government’s way of silencing him. The unfolding situation in Guatemala can have a bearing on the jewel. Since he came to office in 2007, President Colom has expressed support for a definitive solution to the territorial dispute to Belize. We contacted Belize’s Ambassador in Guatemala to get an update on the situation.
Alfredo Martinez, Belizean Ambassador to Guatemala
“The government itself signed the Special Agreement with Belize through the foreign minister. But the special agreement is now inside the congress of Guatemala going through its constitutional procedures through the various committees of congress. We do know that, independent of the situation that is occurring ing on the streets and the allegations, the congress continues to work. Now, the congress went into recess on the fifteenth of May and is not to reconvene again until the fifteenth of June. And it has been expressed to us that it was their post that they would finish their discussions on the Special Agreement by mid-June, ending of June, giving a positive go ahead to the holding of the referendum here in Guatemala, which would then signal to us that we could then proceed in our National Assembly with the discussion of the same. But at this particular stage, congress is in recess, we don’t know how all of this will affect the work of congress in a month’s time when it reconvenes. Hopefully, things will quiet down that things can proceed but at this stage I think it is too early to say what will happen.”
“We don’t know what will occur during the course of the week because the rumour mill continues to grind and there are indications, although not yet confirmed—and I must repeat, it is not yet confirmed—that the consideration of the Chambers of Commerce, which is known here as the CACIF, which is a combination of all the chambers of industry, commerce, agriculture, coffee growers etcetera, may be calling later on in the week for a national strike or a national stoppage of work.”
The International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala has been assigned to investigate the matter along with the F.B.I.
