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naraburns  nihil supernum  4mo ago (text post)   1235 thread views

Transnational Thursday for December 21, 2023

After thirty weeks as @Soriek's passion project, Transnational Thursday is getting added to the auto-post bot. But it hasn't been added to the bot yet, I think, so I'm posting it this week, with apologies to anyone whose plans I've mussed!

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Guatemala

A follow up to last week’s post about the top prosecutor in Guatemala, ordered by the Attorney General, declaring Bernardo Arévalo election victory invalid. Guatemala’s Constitutional Court has rejected the order and urged Congress to secure Arévalo’s inauguration (only about three weeks away now).

The attorney general’s office, resorting to a whole series of court cases, is trying to delegitimize the results of the Guatemalan runoff on August 20, when the progressive Arévalo won the elections with 58% of the vote. The victory of the Semilla Movement delivered a forceful citizen message against the corruption and impunity that prevails in Guatemala, specifically against the so-called “pact of the corrupt,” made up of a group of politicians, members of the military, businesspeople and individuals linked to drug trafficking who have co-opted most of the state institutions since 2019, when they managed to kick out the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a United Nations body that dismantled more than 200 corrupt structures.

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