Although the Ministry of the Interior (Mingob) approved the decision that the National Registry of Persons (Renap) could acquire a new biometric system, President Bernardo Arévalo commented at a press conference last Monday that he will request an analysis of the process.
Renap recently awarded a Q40 million contract to New Generation Network for the operation of the biometric system with facial and fingerprint data of all citizens in the pre-election year.
The company has been questioned because said contract with Renap is the first million-dollar deal with the State, for not having experience of a similar magnitude and for the ties of its legal representatives.
Regarding the questions, Arévalo said that it will be the Minister of the Interior who “does an analysis, an investigation of the scope of the issues that have been raised in the media.”
In the hierarchical structure of Renap, the Executive is represented in its highest authority, its board of directors, through the Interior portfolio. In the first instance, the Minister of the Interior or, as his substitute, the administrative vice-minister.
According to official documents, the process of requisitioning a new biometric system to store citizen records, administered by Renap, was endorsed on July 29 of last year by all members of the board.
That is to say, they were aware of the process and it was approved by the judge of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Blanca Alfaro, -who represented the instance at that time-, the administrative vice-minister of the Mingob, Felipe Sánchez, replacing Francisco Jiménez, who was the minister; and on behalf of Congress, Edgar Rodríguez Barrios, elected as the titular representative in 2023, during the presidency of Shirley Rivera, endorsed the requisition.
With what is recorded in the minutes, it is proven that, from the first steps of the administrative process for the award of the public tender, the Mingob was aware of and approved each phase. Felipe Sánchez is still administrative vice minister of the Interior portfolio and was the one who signed all the official documents until the award.
Although there was a change of minister in the institution three months after the requisition process, the current holder of the portfolio, Marco Antonio Villeda, did not change administrative vice minister and continued to endorse the process.
A position was requested from the Mingob regarding the actions of the administrative vice minister, however, there was no response by the time of this edition.