2023-12-18 08:04:42
Former US ambassador Stephen McFarland, in an interview last week, explained two important issues about the mass visa withdrawal. From his experience, it is an authoritative voice, although not necessarily official, but useful in allowing Guatemalans to understand the terrain where officials and politicians, among others, stand. It is one of the great known cuts of that document, as it includes 110 deputies (70% of Congress) to which is added the previous burial on the Magnitsky list of the unpresentable Miguel Martínez, a powerful character who received the general booing of Guatemalans, fed up with the intolerable abuses of a president who, for the benefit of Guatemala, only has 26 days left in office.
The criteria of some does not matter, but rather how they rate the political actions of the current government abroad.
Mario Antonio Sandoval
The attempt to overturn the election led to the withdrawal of the visas, McFarland said. The recalcitrant boast; others consider it a mistake; some try to correct it and cooperate. If the corrupt pact manages to annul the election, the next dictatorial government will persecute the opponents and will be a dictatorship. It is a film that Guatemalans have already seen during the times of the military, and it will be a coup d’état against the entire process. The United States must respond, but above all the people, and the Constitutional Court, in addition to the already public sanctions. The coup is advancing, the coup plotters of the pact are desperate. Their legal arguments are absurd but they don’t care. In October they were forced to take a step back due to the actions of indigenous peoples.
He added: the Engel law, bipartisan during Trump’s time, mentions names of corrupt people. The accused and his closest relatives are affected. The boast is from tooth to lip, but the decision is not the product of gossip, but of a rigorous process carried out and updated twice a year by the departments of State, Justice and Treasury. The Magnitsky law is named in honor of a Russian who was tortured and died in prison for investigating corruption in his country. It is very hard. The banks freeze the accounts, they cannot provide services, credits, transfers, etc., for the rest of the world if they pass through NY. Being based on verified information from the State Department on corruption, undemocratic actions or human rights, companies do not take any risks.
On another issue, on Friday the Inter-American Court of Human Rights condemned the Fénix mine, owned by the Swiss-based company Solway Investment Group, because Guatemala violated the rights of the Quekchí in Izabal by authorizing a mine 20 years ago. of copper extraction in lands occupied by that ethnic group for 200 years. Two of its officials were already sanctioned by the US Treasury Department in November 2022. Because there are other similar litigations, it is an open door to another new series of internal problems whose effects abroad will mean the elimination of foreign investments not only on this controversial mining issue, in a country where the government—this one or any other—does not have a good name.
I point out these two issues to inform the common citizen, not to comment on whether they are correct, deserved, malicious and so on, to which is added the seriousness of the actions taken by the European Union. Guatemala is frowned upon for recent or long-standing actions and is added to the irresponsible Giammateian decision to authorize an absurd budget, the product of political revenge even if the country collapses. Refusing to understand it, beyond our personal thoughts, interests, opinions or political or ideological positions, far from helping, complicates the tasks of removing everyone’s earth from the black hole to which many of its bad children have taken it.
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