Guatemala's Congress on Monday began the process of selecting 13 new Supreme Court judges in a process seen as crucial to the fight against corruption in one of Latin America's poorest countries. In Guatemala, members of the Supreme Court and Appeal Court judges are elected every five years. The renewal of the court follows a showdown last year between the judiciary and newly-elected President Bernardo Arevalo, with a prosecutor suspected of links to corrupt judges, politicians and businessmen attempting to overturn his victory.
Arevalo, who won on an anti-corruption platform, warned last month that the judiciary was being "hijacked by mafias." He appealed to Congress members last month to select the "best" candidates in order to "continue in the spirit of change the country needs" and ensure "an independent justice system." Former Chilean foreign minister Antonia Urrejola, who is a member of a panel of international experts monitoring the process, said the judges' election was a proxy battle between Arevalo's camp and a so-called "corrupt pact" of entrenched political and other interests.
"They lost the executive and now they do not want to lose the judiciary," she said. In a preliminary report last week, the panel expressed "concern" about signs of "parallel negotiations by corrupt politico-economic actors" to favor candidates linked to them. The nominees need to garner more than 50 percent of the votes from the country's 160 Congress members in order to win election.
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