Guatemalan bishops respond to Morales' actions

David Agren looks at how Guatemalan bishops have rejected President Jimmy Morales' move to neuter CICIG by removing Ivan Velasquez for the Catholic News Service in "Guatemala bishops condemn president's firing of anti-corruption official."

Guatemala's bishops criticized the country's president for expelling an international anti-corruption commissioner. They also called for public protests to remain peaceful, for politicians to act in the national interest and for the president to obey a court order against his actions.

The bishops expressed "their conviction that the struggle against corruption and impunity constitutes a need that cannot be put off and an urgent task for the Guatemalan state," said an Aug. 27 statement from the Guatemala bishops' conference. "Weakening the CICIG" -- the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala — favors, in the name of supposed sovereignty, that impunity and corrupt individuals emerge as the beneficiaries," read the statement, signed by Bishop Gonzalo de Villa Vasquez of Solola-Chimaltenango, president of the bishops' conference.

Morales' might have known that national and international condemnation would be the most likely response to removing Velasquez. However, it might also have been a last ditch effort to hold onto power as authorities moved against him and those close to him.