CICIG tackles Guatemala's corrupt political parties

On Wednesday, Guatemalan authorities and CICIG accused vice presidential candidate of Lider and former central bank governor Edgar Barquin of corruption.

According to CICIG, Barquin and the two lawmakers were part of a criminal network led by businessman Francisco Morales, who allegedly used ghost companies to channel more than $120 million (76.82 million pounds) to China, the United States, and Colombia, among other nations.

Ivan Velasquez, commissioner for CICIG, said Barquin sent central bank staff to advise Morales and ordered authorities not to investigate him.

Morales and 10 others allegedly involved in the operations have been detained.

Barquin is currently Manuel Baldizon's running mate for this September's national elections. They were clearly the front-runners until yesterday's arrests. It seems to be unclear at this moment what the implications are for Lider's presidential ticket. The arrests are one more indication that the corruption in Guatemala goes well beyond Otto Perez Molina and the Patriotic Party. Every political party has either been established for personal gain or infiltrated by those who seek to enrich themselves, some obviously more than others.

We should get a better sense of just how corrupt the political process in Guatemala is by the end of the day. CICIG is presently delivering its report on political parties and organized crime. Interestingly enough, today's report will come in spite of Perez Molina's disagreement with the path that CICIG launched over a year and a half ago. Here's my post from December 2013.

CICIG recently announced that one of its main priorities during its remaining two years was to uncover the links between organized crime and political campaigns. CICIG is going to be looking into campaign financing which should make just about every political party uneasy and every citizen happy. However, the announcement sounded somewhat odd given what we thought that they had been doing for the last six years.

Yesterday, President Otto Perez Molina reiterated that CICIG instead should focus on mayors with ties to narcotrafficking. Vice President Roxanna Baldetti made that suggestion just a few days ago. They do not believe that CICIG has enough time and resources to complete its current investigations, help with transforming the country's legal institutions, and open a new front in the war on political party financing. I am sure VP Baldetti probably just does not want CICIG investigating her.

Investigating narcotrafficking's relationship with municipal government and campaign financing are both important areas that need attention from CICIG. If I had to choose, I would follow CICIG's lead and go big. CICIG will probably have more success investigating individual mayors and their connections to drug trafficking and organized crime but when it comes to transforming the system in Guatemala, there's no better place to start to learning where all the political contributions are coming from and what they are buying.

I'm glad that CICIG went big. Let's hope I'm right on transforming the system as well.