In the courtroom, the former president listened to dozens of phone calls, recorded by state prosecutors, in which customs officials agreed to charge importers reduced rates at ports and borders. In images of the hearing, broadcast on TV, he looked stiff, and gazed downward. Guatemalan television also showed hundreds of citizens gathered outside the court, some enveloped in flags, celebrating. The investigation, which drew on more than sixty thousand wiretapped phone calls and thousands of e-mails, was a joint operation of the attorney general’s office and the U.N. International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, or CICIG.
General elections are scheduled for this Sunday, September 6th, but it’s unclear if they will be held. (Pérez Molina was not eligible to run due to term limits.) Yesterday, as Pérez Molina prepared to spend his first night in prison, Vice-President Alejandro Maldonado was sworn in as his interim replacement.
Last Thursday, after prosecutors announced the charges, an estimated hundred thousand people packed Guatemala City’s Plaza Central to demand Pérez Molina’s resignation, and thousands more marched throughout the country. The powerful business association Cacif called for a general strike to support the protests, and the daily newspaper El Periódico ran the popular hashtag #YoNoTengoPresidente (I Don’t Have a President) as a front-page headline. In one of his last, desperate moves to remain in power, Perez Molina accused CICIG of serving foreign interests, claimed to be innocent of the charges, and asked rural Guatemala, “the deep Guatemala,” to take the streets and show its support for him. His call was answered by Thursday’s protest against him, the largest of twenty peaceful protests that had been held since the fraud scheme was disclosed in April.