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GUATEMALA: Despite Flaws, Judge Selection
Process Improved, Say NGOs
By Danilo Valladares
GUATEMALA CITY (IPS) - A new process
aimed at making the selection of judges more
transparent in Guatemala failed to block the
appointment of several candidates who were
questioned by civil society and a
U.N.-sponsored commission set up to
strengthen and purge the country's justice
system.
A new law that created expert committees to
nominate candidates for the Supreme Court
and the appeals courts for the 2009-2014
period opened up the process to citizen
oversight and participation.
Nevertheless, the legislature designated six
candidates to the Supreme Court who had been
rejected by the United Nations-sponsored
International Commission against Impunity in
Guatemala (CICIG) and local NGOs because
they faced serious accusations of
corruption.
Even U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon,
through his spokesperson Michèle Montas,
urged the Guatemalan Congress to make sure
that the new members of the Supreme Court
were competent, independent and of
unquestionable integrity.
In the end, Congress only replaced three of
the six candidates opposed by CICIG, after
the Constitutional Court ruled that the
legislature had failed to take into account
the observations against the candidates.
Three other candidates questioned by NGOs,
but not CICIG, were also confirmed by
Congress.
Thus, a total of six of the 13 new Supreme
Court magistrates appointed on Oct. 13 were
opposed by local NGOs or CICIG: Thelma
Aldana (the only woman on the Court), Dimas
Bonilla, Mynor Franco, César Barrientos,
Luis Arturo Archila and José Arturo Sierra.
Civil society groups plan to closely monitor
the magistrates during their five-year
stints on the Supreme Court.
In the selection of 90 appeals court judges,
legislators ruled out 30 candidates who were
questioned, 20 of them by CICIG and 10 by
the U.S. embassy with the support of social
organisations.
NGOs complained that two of the appeals
court judges who were selected were related
to members of the nominating committees -
comprised of university presidents, law
school deans, and delegates from the bar
association and the Instituto de Magistrados
(which represents judges) - that drew up
short-lists of nominees from more than 1,000
candidates.
The short-lists were submitted last month to
Congress, which selected 13 Supreme Court
magistrates and 90 appeals court judges.
But despite the fact that some candidates
rejected by CICIG and NGOs were designated
in the end, activists say the process was a
positive experience because for the first
time, there was some oversight and
transparency in the selection of judges.
"This process was very positive, because for
the first time in the history of this
country, civil society participated actively
in the debate on the administration of
justice and the need to take a close look at
a candidate's professional qualifications
and ethics," Carmen Aída Ibarra of the Myrna
Mack Foundation, a local human rights group,
told IPS.
The activist said the new law that created
the nominating committees allowed NGOs to
actively take part in overseeing and
monitoring the process, by making
information available to the public and
taking legal action, for example. "More than
50 organisations got involved, and we were
able to go directly to the place where the
decisions on the candidates were reached,"
she said.
Social organisations like the Movimiento
Cívico Nacional, Pro Justicia, and
Convocatoria Ciudadana submitted formal
written complaints rejecting around 300
candidates (mainly to the appeals courts)
with a murky past, such as involvement in
illegal adoptions or other corrupt
activities, or a track record of defending
drug traffickers in court.
Ibarra also recognised the role played by
the Constitutional Court and CICIG in
helping to guarantee the transparency of the
process, "because we all knew there were
dark forces behind the selection" of judges.
The worst role was played by the
legislature, she said. Its reluctance to
make the debate and vote on the candidates
open, rather than secret, and its decision
to select candidates opposed by CICIG and
civil society, showed the legislators' lack
of interest in fighting impunity and
corruption in the country, she argued.
The administration of justice is a serious
problem in this impoverished Central
American country, which has one of the
highest rates of non-political violence in
the world.
According to the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) human development report on
Central America, released this month,
Guatemala is the only country in the region
where the murder rate is steadily climbing.
The report says the homicide rate soared
from 28 per 100,000 population in 2000 to 48
per 100,000 today.
That situation is especially serious given
that 98 percent of all murders go unresolved
in this country, according to CICIG, which
began to operate in January 2008 with the
aim of restoring trust in corruption-riddled
institutions like the police and the justice
system. One of its key focuses is to help
identify illegal, clandestine armed security
groups, so they can be dismantled.
Eleonora Muralles, an activist with
Relatives and Friends against Crime and
Kidnapping (FADS), another local NGO, told
IPS that "independently of whether or not
the result was 100 percent good, on the
balance, the new judge selection process was
positive.
"We demonstrated that by coming together
behind a common objective, different groups
with different ideologies could show the
public how the judges were selected, how the
nominating committees were created, and how
each one of the committee members acted,"
she said.
The new process also made it possible to
shed some light on the obscure interests and
powers behind the process - an aspect in
which CICIG's involvement was decisive, said
Muralles.
The public found out, for instance, that the
governing party, the social democratic
National Union of Hope (UNE), held
negotiations with Roberto López Villatoro, a
former member of the right-wing Guatemalan
Republican Front (FRG), to gain control over
the courts, the activist said.
But while Muralles said the new process for
the selection of judges was a step forward
in fighting impunity, she added that "the
Supreme Court is just one part of the
justice system. Salvaging it is not
sufficient; there are also the attorney
general's office, the police, and the prison
system: the entire chain has to function in
order to reduce impunity to acceptable
levels."
Ramón Cadena of the International Commission
of Jurists told IPS that the new process for
selecting Supreme Court and appeals court
judges was "a partial step forward in the
fight against impunity."
The lawyer said civil society "rescued" the
process of the designation of judges thanks
to its oversight. But he said he was
concerned that six of the 13 designated
members of the Supreme Court had been
questioned.
That "disturbing" situation compromises the
actions of the Court, he stated.
"The selection process showed the political
wheeling and dealing that occurred in the
nominating committees and in Congress,"
Cadena said.
For his part, Daniel Pascual, one of the
leaders of the Committee for Campesino
(Peasant) Unity, told IPS that his movement
has witnessed the high level of influences
in the justice system, which he said has
been infiltrated by different drug
trafficking, political and military groups.
Pascual was pessimistic with respect to the
prospect of improving the administration of
justice. "This selection process was flawed,
so we don't expect things to change," he
said.
He pointed out that Guatemala's indigenous
peasant farmers - Amerindians represent a
majority of the country's population - have
suffered heavily from impunity, to the point
that instead of being treated as victims in
cases in which activists and local leaders
are murdered, they are accused and
persecuted by the justice system.
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