Interim Leader Forced to Resign in Guatemala

Vice President Gustavo Espina Salguero lost his bid to replace ousted President Jorge Serrano on Friday after the military withdrew its support and a broad coalition of business and political leaders demanded that he be removed from office.

Under attack from all sides, Espina was said to have resigned and to be attempting to negotiate an amnesty with army commanders. The removal of Espina appeared to put Guatemala back on the path to democratic rule after 10 days of political chaos.

“He (Espina) has agreed to resign,” said legislator Alfonso Cabrera of the Christian Democratic Party, a member of the coalition formed to find an end to Guatemala’s constitutional crisis.

The Congress will reconvene today to formally accept Espina’s resignation and begin deliberations over who should replace Serrano, politicians said.

Espina declared himself president Wednesday after Serrano was toppled in a military coup on Tuesday. A week earlier, Serrano had staged his own coup by suspending the constitution and dissolving Congress and the Supreme Court.

Espina’s attempt to fill the void left by Serrano was short-lived. Opposition was fierce and immediate. It culminated Friday when the highest court in the nation ruled that Espina was ineligible to serve as president because he was an accomplice to Serrano’s usurpation of power.

The Constitutional Court set a 24-hour deadline for Congress to convene and choose a new chief executive.

“This is good news,” said Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, a Guatemalan-born Mayan Indian who has been leading street demonstrations to protest Espina’s potential government, widely regarded as a military front. “This is what the people wanted.”

Espina’s move violated an agreement among army commanders and business and political leaders whereby Serrano would be deposed and replaced by an independent chosen by Congress. Espina was merely to serve as acting president in a brief interim while the successor was chosen.

The turning point in forcing Espina to back down came Friday when Guatemala’s business elite joined with politicians and, for the first time, union activists to exert pressure on the army, which was backing Espina.

After arduous negotiations, including a three-hour meeting with Espina, the coalition decided that the would-be president was just as guilty as Serrano of undermining the constitution and had to go.

The coalition drew up a three-page statement demanding that Espina resign and that a new president and vice president be chosen as soon as possible. The 26-member coalition then paid a visit to Defense Minister Gen. Jose Domingo Garcia Samayoa and the military High Command to seek approval.

“The military cannot ignore the streets,” said legislator Jorge Carpio of the opposition Union of the National Center party, a member of the coalition. “The military cannot ignore all of these sectors.”

The coalition said in a news conference late Friday that the army “reacted positively” to the proposal in the first public sign that military support for Espina was waning.

The coalition represents a broad spectrum of Guatemalan society, including the powerful business elite who essentially control the national economy and the unions that can mobilize street demonstrations.

It was pressure from the business elite, in combination with threats of international isolation and economic sanctions, that finally persuaded the army to oust Serrano after he seized absolute power May 25.

“What you are seeing here is a recognition by all the civilian leaders of Guatemala that we have not known how to manage a democratic system,” said Juan Luis Bosch, a prominent executive in the food industry. “Our failure is not due to the stereotype of the orangutan Latin American military but to our own inability to give the people a working democracy that meets their needs.”

Bosch and the other business and political leaders saw Friday’s events as evidence that civilians are able to negotiate with the powerful military, in a country that has been dominated by right-wing, often brutal military rule for most of the last 3 1/2 decades.

Garcia, the defense minister, told members of the coalition when they consulted with him on Friday that the army considered taking “more forceful measures” at one point during the past week’s crisis but then opted against it, according to those present.

Espina spent several hours Friday evening at the residence of Defense Minister Garcia and was negotiating an amnesty, said a lawyer familiar with cases pending against Espina.

The candidate for Guatemala’s presidency must be a political independent with “qualities of leadership” and a “clean history,” the coalition said.

Among the names mentioned are Arturo Herbruger, president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, and Ramiro de Leon Carpio, Guatemala’s human rights ombudsman.