Constitutional Court
Orders Removal of Guatemalan Education
Minister
By Daniel Altschuler,
www.americasquartlery.org
On February 25, Guatemala’s Constitutional
Court ordered the removal of Education
Minister Bienvenido Argueta for failing to
provide the court with complete information
regarding the beneficiaries of President
Álvaro Colóm’s flagship social program, Mi
Familia Progresa.
This latest development in a months-old
political drama augurs poorly for
Guatemala’s fragile education system and
President Colóm’s claims to be supporting
transparency measures in this notoriously
corrupt nation.
Mi Familia Progresa (MFP) is Guatemala’s
conditional cash transfer (CCT) program,
which provides cash payments to poor
mothers, conditional upon them sending their
children to school and for health check-ups.
CCT programs have become increasingly
popular in Latin America, as they have shown
demonstrably positive results on school
enrolment and child health.
President Colóm has hailed MFP as the
cornerstone of his anti-poverty platform in
Guatemala, but critics have argued that
Colóm has used the program to reward voters
who supported him in the 2007 elections.
Colóm’s critics also worry that the
president has been transferring funds from
other ministries to the program to use it as
a campaign tool for his wife, Sandra Torres
de Colóm, the coordinator and face of the
Council of Social Cohesion that oversees MFP.
In recent months, congresswoman Nineth
Montenegro has been leading efforts to force
the Colóm government to divulge the names of
program beneficiaries along with their
identification numbers. Montenegro, former
human rights activist and leader of
Encuentro por Guatemala (the party that
nominated Rigoberta Menchú as its
presidential candidate in the 2007
elections), wants the information to
determine the validity of accusations that
the Colóm government was using this program
for partisan ends. She won a court order
demanding that the Ministry of Education
provide a full list of program
beneficiaries’ names and ID numbers. The
Ministry of Education proceeded to provide
only the names, denying that it needed to
provide further information.
Montenegro then went back to the
Constitutional Court, which responded by
issuing the order for Argueta’s dismissal.
At the time of writing, the Colóm government
had not responded to the Court’s actions.
But, whatever comes next, certain
consequences of the ruling are already
clear.
First, Argueta’s dismissal will thrust an
already-weak Guatemalan education system
into further disarray. Since classes began
in late January, the country’s principal
teacher’s union has gone on strike
repeatedly—closing schools, occupying
Ministry offices and blocking roads. The
teachers first took action in late 2009 and
early 2010 to support the government’s call
for increased taxes to augment the nation’s
education budget. More recently, though, the
union took to the streets after breaking off
negotiations with Minister Argueta over
salary increases.
As if that were not enough, the Ministry has
also failed at many schools to distribute
food and school supplies for students
on-time. These delays, at least in part,
reflect the broader fiscal crisis facing
Colóm’s government given its inability to
get Congress to pass tax reform.
Now, assuming the government accepts the
Court’s order, Guatemala will have its third
education minister in six months. Bringing
in a new education chief will undoubtedly
lead to further delays in putting out the
union-related and logistical fires already
dogging the ministry. Unfortunately, putting
out these fires will also postpone the
long-term task of improving the quality of
Guatemalan education. Education experts all
agree that, though education coverage has
improved dramatically since the 1996 Peace
Accords, the quality of education remains
woefully low and nowhere near a level
necessary for Guatemala to transform itself
from being one of the poorest countries in
the Americas.
The Court’s action will also have further
repercussions for Colóm’s government. Colóm
has recently tried to fashion himself as a
leader in the struggle for greater
transparency in Guatemala, criticizing
widespread impunity and corruption and
arresting former President Alfonso Portillo
on corruption charges. In fact, hours before
the Court ordered Argueta’s dismissal, Colóm
ousted his Minister of Agriculture, Mario
Aldana, for irregularities in bids to supply
a government program with fertilizer.
But Thursday’s ruling against Argueta will
undermine Colóm’s pro-transparency stance.
If Colóm were serious about his position, he
would have ordered Argueta to abide by the
Court’s ruling. It is hard to believe that
Argueta would have resisted if Colóm had
insisted that he comply. As it stands, the
ruling against Argueta gives the impression
that Colóm’s government is either
incompetent or hiding something. And
“stupid” or “corrupt” are not typically the
adjectives between which a government would
like to choose.
But perhaps the most distressing consequence
of the MFP controversy will be the potential
discrediting of government programs designed
to address Guatemala’s rampant poverty and
inequality. CCT programs have a strong
international track record of improving
educational and health outcomes in Latin
America. But, in Guatemala, this model has
been tainted by accusations of malfeasance
that the government has done nothing to
dispel. Now, opponents of Colóm (the first
Guatemalan president elected on a
left-of-center platform since 1954) will
feel emboldened in their criticisms against
government spending to alleviate poverty and
address its underlying causes. Already, the
Guatemalan Right has held up much-needed tax
reform, basing its opposition on arguments
that taxes should not increase until
taxpayers can trust that their tax dollars
will be used effectively and transparently.
This argument is, in large part, a spurious
recasting of the anti-tax position that the
Guatemalan Right has maintained since 1996,
but Thursday’s court ruling will likely
bolster the anti-tax lobby’s position.
Finally, looking forward to Guatemala’s next
elections, the potential ramifications of
the current crisis are even more worrying.
It’s no secret that the man to beat in the
upcoming elections will be retired General
Otto Pérez Molina, who barely lost to Colóm
in 2007. The election of Pérez Molina, who
played a critical role in the genocide of
rural indigenous Guatemalans in the 1980s,
would signal a major step backward for a
country that has only begun its fight
against impunity.
With all these issues in mind, it is clear
that Argueta’s dismissal could have a major
impact on the remainder of President Colóm’s
term. It will now be up to Colóm to show
leadership by respecting the Court’s
decision and appointing a new Minister who
will provide the required information on MFP.
If Colóm is serious about supporting greater
transparency in Guatemala, his government
must share its complete files and shed light
on MFP. Continued secrecy will only prolong
this scandal, and, in the process, further
weaken the education system, undermine
transparency initiatives, and strengthen
Colóm’s right-wing opposition.
Daniel Altschuler is a contributing
blogger to americasquarterly.org conducting
research in Guatemala and Honduras. He is a
Rhodes Scholar and doctoral candidate in
Politics at the University of Oxford, and
his research focuses on civic and political
participation in Honduras and Guatemala. |
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