The elected attorney general Gabriel Garcia Luna holds a meeting with María Consuelo Porras Argueta, who must hand over her position on May 17 after consecutive terms.
Sources informed about the transition process confirmed to Free press the meeting between the heads of the outgoing and incoming Public Ministry (MP) at the headquarters and the beginning of the formalization of the handover and taking charge.
Garcia Luna was elected attorney general by President Bernardo Arévalo for a four-year term, from 2026 to 2030. The inauguration is scheduled for May 17.
The Public Ministry reported that the Attorney General and her administrative and fiscal team participated during the technical meeting, along with the doctor. García Luna and his designated transition team. The primary objective of the meeting, according to the institution “was to establish the bases for an orderly, transparent and strictly technical transition, in compliance with the applicable legislation.”.
The transition team requested a series of reports that guarantee the process and continuity in the provision of services that the Public Ministry offers to the population, it was reported.
The Public Ministry reaffirmed “its commitment to institutional strengthening and respect for the legal order, guaranteeing a transition that prioritizes efficiency and legal security of the country”.
The handover, like many stages of the process, has been surrounded by tension. The Public Ministry questioned the non-publication of the appointment agreement. There were also several protections in the Constitutional Court, which were denied, thus validated the process of application.
Appointment agreement sent
On May 12, the Executive sent the government agreement to the Public Ministry that appoints Gabriel García Luna as attorney general. The General Secretariat of the Presidency, the document has an administrative and non-regulatory nature, so it does not need to be published in the Diario de Centroamérica (DCA) to have legal effect.
The Secretary General, Juan Guerrero Garnica, indicated that President Bernardo Arévalo waited for the deadlines for challenges and appeals to conclude before issuing the agreement on May 5.
The MP’s Communication Department indicated that the meeting is in progress. García Luna presented to the nomination committee a work plan that is made up of 14 axesamong which the review of the special prosecutors’ offices, the criteria for applying the reserve and the dismissal of cases stand out.
Application process
The president chose García Luna from a list of six candidates, the second one he formulated the candidate to comply with a resolution of the Constitutional Court (CC), which ordered a new evaluation of the files of the candidates who came from the judicial career.
The new weighting of merits was carried out based on the criteria of the CC, which established that the practice of judges is not equivalent to that of the legal profession. Thus, several judges experienced drops in their grades.
In the second vote for the composition of the payroll, García Luna obtained the unanimous support of the commissioners, unlike the first round, when he obtained nine votes.
García Luna has been a criminal advisor in the Superior Office of the Attorney General’s Office (PGN) since 2024. That institution is headed by Julio Saavedra, one of the president’s trusted men.
The application process has unleashed criticism among the different observation missions, local and international, for the weaknesses in the formulation of instruments, such as the grading table of the academic, professional and human career merits of the applicants, and which they pointed out was designed to favor a group of candidates and not to identify the best profiles.