The Lowdown on Central America's 'Spring'

Kevin A. Lees

Society, Central America

Could Guatemala and others be on the path to a more democratic future?

Though he had just four months left in office, Guatemala’s president, Otto Pérez Molina will not be around to hand over power next January.

Pérez Molina resigned early Thursday morning, after prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for him, and judicial officials instructed him not to leave the country. Pérez Molina will now face corruption charges related to a customs-fraud scheme that has entangled over a dozen top ministers and Vice President Roxana Baldetti, who resigned in May and is now facing trial as well. Posters extolling the ruling right-wing Patriotic Party (which Pérez Molina, a former army general, founded in 2001) are being torn down across the country’s capital.

While Pérez Molina awaits the verdict of the judicial system, joyful Guatemalans are preparing to deliver an electoral verdict when they choose a new president in Sunday’s general election.

The Guatemalan Congress’ Tuesday decision to strip Pérez Molina of immunity and the embattled president’s subsequent resignation is a historic inflection point. It’s a clear success for the tens of thousands of protesters who marched the streets of Guatemala City and Tegucigalpa alike this summer, loudly condemning the graft of Guatemalan and Honduran political elites, and the ability of civil society to demand Pérez Molina’s accountability is an important moment in the development of Central America’s democratic and participatory institutions. Leaders like Honduras’ conservative president Juan Orlando Hernández and El Salvador’s leftist president Salvador Sánchez Cerén could meet additional blowback in countries with equally systemic corruption and even more violent streets.