Politics of Guatemala

Participation by women and indigenous voters was higher than in the recent past, although concerns remained regarding the accessibility of polling places in rural areas.

Alfonso Portillo's landslide victory combined with a Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) majority in Congress suggested possibilities for rapid legislative action.

Following an investigation, the Supreme Court stripped those involved, including President of Congress and FRG chief Ríos Montt, of their legislative immunity to face charges in the case.

Impunity remains a major problem, primarily because democratic institutions, including those responsible for the administration of justice, have developed only a limited capacity to cope with this legacy.

Since 2004 Óscar Berger of the GANA (a coalition of political parties rather than a single one) won the elections, it is important to note that this was the first government in the history of democratic Guatemala that did not have an overwhelming majority in Congress.

After he took office in January 2004 it was made public that the FRG had wildly ransacked the government going to the extremes of stealing computer equipment and objects of historic importance.

Alfonso Portillo fled to Mexico with an impressive amount of money stolen from military funds, the national hospital, and the revenue service.

Guatemala made a formal request for the deportation of Portillo to face charges of embezzlement, however, Mexico has never revoked diplomatic asylum once it is granted to a person.

Criminality has reached staggering proportions: about 200 murders per month and it is starting to affect the economy as many companies prefer to leave the country than face the growing corruption and insecurity.

These are two rival street gangs comprising loosely linked international franchise organizations, who wield a power somewhat like that of the US mafia of the 1930s and are for the moment above and beyond the grasp of the law.

That industry is of a different class of organized crime in Guatemala, with Mexican smugglers and top-ranking Guatemalan police officials regularly making headlines being caught with hundreds of kilograms of cocaine.

The mara phenomenon originated in the United States in the 1980s, specifically in Los Angeles, among refugees fleeing civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala.

Various narco-mafias vie for control of the remote northern jungle regions of Petén, where drugs, arms, and people all cross the border into Mexico, mostly bound for the United States.

Guatemala is plagued by lynchings which severely blemish the country's humans rights record as a violation of due process of law.

The administration is facing growing financial difficulties, potentially in part due to 60% of the population being considered "poor" and therefore ineligible for taxation.

Some inmates, the guard of the chief of the mafioso what ran the prison and the leader himself resisted the onslaught of forces of law with AK-47 and handguns, they were massacred.

[10] In August 2023, Bernardo Arevalo, the candidate of the centre-left Semilla (Seed) Movement, had a landslide victory in Guatemala's presidential election.