From anti-communist youth leader to the vice presidency in Guatemala

From the list of three names that President Otto Perez Molina selected to replaced former Vice President Roxana Baldetti, the Guatemalan Congress selected Alejandro Maldonado Aguirre, a constitutional judge who previously served as cabinet minister (1970s), ambassador (1990s) and congressman (1960s and 2000s). Maldonado had also run twice for the position of vice president in the past. Apparently, his first visit to the Presidential Palace occurred in 1954 as a youth anti-communist leader.

Maldonado said he was accepting the position "with the conviction that I must serve, do everything I can so that the government works within Guatemalan institutions."

Some compared the selection of Maldonado to plucking a sitting Supreme Court justice to serve as vice president in the United States. It's somewhat comparable, however, Constitutional and Supreme Court justices do not serve life sentences as they do on the US Supreme Court. While some might like the Courts to be apolitical institutions, that's not the way that they work.

However, given that Maldonado is coming from the Constitutional Court, that means he has been involved in several controversial decisions of the last several years, including the 2013 verdict that overturned the Efrain Rios Montt genocide conviction, validating corrupt appellate and Supreme Court selections, reducing the minimum salary, shortening Claudia Paz y Paz's term as attorney general, and preventing the implementation of a telephone tax.

According to some Nomada reporting, PP-Líder and their CACIF allies convinced CREO and Todos to support the longtime but surprisingly "not dirty" candidate. One of the vice president's first acts was to say that he would not make his finances public. He would only provide them to the Public Ministry and CICIG.

I'm not sure that's going to satisfy the protesters in Guatemala, nor should it.