The nomination commission made the list of six candidates for attorney general, and ruled out the continuity of María Consuelo Porras for a third term at the head of the Public Ministry (MP).
The session was called for this Monday, April 20, at 1:00 p.m., but it was an hour and a half later that the commissioners began to arrive at the Hearing Room of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ).
Only nine candidates reached the cut-off line of 75 points after being evaluated with the grading table, a tool that measured each lawyer by academic, professional and ethical merits.
But because at least 12 eligible applicants were necessary to make the list of six candidates, the commission decided to include the three closest to that cut-off line.
The beneficiaries were Raúl Estuardo López Rodríguez, Beyla Adaly Xiomara Estrada Barrientos and Zoila Tatiana Morales Valdizón, who had grades between 70.28 and 74.26. The last two were included in the final list of candidates for attorney general.
The voting rounds began at 3:27 p.m. and the commissioners voted, out loud, explaining whether for or against the candidates, starting from the highest score to the lowest.
María Consuelo Porras, candidate for attorney general and who was seeking a third term, was ruled out in four rounds of voting. It only had the support of six of the 15 commissioners.
This is Luis Lepe, from the Regional University; José González, from the University of the West; Claudia Paredes, president of the CSJ; Henry Arriaga, from the University of San Carlos of Guatemala; Enrique Sánchez Usera, from the Pan American University; and Alicia Franco, president of the Court of Honor of the College of Lawyers and Notaries of Guatemala (Cang).
The candidates
The first candidate to be included in the list of candidates for attorney general was Beyla Adaly Xiomara Estrada Barrientos, who obtained 13 votes in favor and two against. These being Patricia Gámez, president of the Cang Board of Directors; and Julio Cordón, from Rafael Landívar University (URL).
Estrada, when graded last Friday, obtained 61.73 points, then due to a review proposed by the dean of the URL, Estrada obtained 12 additional points.
She achieved a grade of 73.73, managing to be among the grades close to the cut-off line that made her eligible and becoming the first member of the list of six candidates elected in the first round of voting.
In the next round of voting, four professionals entered the list of candidates. The second elected was César Augusto Ávila Aparicio, qualified with a score of 92.13, with 10 votes in favor and five against.
The third professional included in the list of candidates to lead the MP was Julio Rivera Clavería, who obtained 11 votes in favor and four against. In the qualification phase he obtained an evaluation of 88.93.
The fourth professional included in the list of candidates is Gabriel Estuardo García Luna, receiving 10 votes in favor and five against. In the qualification phase he obtained a grade of 86.21.
Some commissioners, including Enrique Sánchez Usera, from Universidad Panamericana; and Claudia Paredes, from the CSJ, questioned García Luna’s profile for having been credited with years of experience as a judge.
This Thursday, the Constitutional Court (CC) scheduled to hear an injunction from lawyer Raúl Falla, who questions the applicants and seeks to ensure that they are not credited with points for being judges, which could alter the grade with which they were considered eligible.
The fifth professional who made it to the list of candidates was Zoila Tatiana Morales Valdizón. She received 10 votes in favor and five against, obtaining a score of 70.28 points.
The sixth professional is Néctor Guilebaldo de León Ramírez, who obtained a score of 79.69 points. In a fourth round of voting, he obtained the support of 11 commissioners and four voted against.
Pending protections
The nomination commission for attorney general accumulates more than 20 protections and three complaints, according to monitoring carried out by Guatemala Visible, an organization that oversees the MP renewal process.
Some of these protections question the qualification process, and ask that the grades be suspended or that the commissioners be ordered to repeat the process for, apparently, omitting some documents.
Among these is the protection of Marco Antonio Villeda, Minister of the Interior, who seeks to be accredited for his years of professional practice as a judge.
The applicant credited him with a grade of 41.86 out of 100, because he never registered as a lawyer before the CSJ, which cost him a grade that made him ineligible for the process.
The CC is also about to hear this Thursday an injunction that questions the qualification of years of professional practice in favor of judges, and another that sought for the commission to include the best qualified applicants on the payroll.