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The following lists events in the year 2018 in Guatemala .
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The following lists events in the year 2018 in Guatemala .
Politics of Guatemala takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, where by the President of Guatemala is both head of state, head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Congress of the Republic. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. Guatemala is a Constitutional Republic.
José Efraín Ríos Montt was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who served as de facto President of Guatemala in 1982–83. His brief tenure as chief executive was one of the bloodiest periods in the long-running Guatemalan Civil War. Ríos Montt's counter-insurgency strategies significantly weakened the Marxist guerrillas organized under the umbrella of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG), while also leading to accusations of war crimes and genocide perpetrated by the Guatemalan Army under his leadership.
Ramiro de León Carpio was the President of Guatemala from 6 June 1993 until 14 January 1996.
Álvaro Enrique Arzú Irigoyen was a Guatemalan politician and businessman who served as the 32nd President of Guatemala from 14 January 1996 until 14 January 2000. He was elected Mayor of Guatemala City on six occasions: in 1982, when he declined taking office because of a coup d'état; in 1986; in 2003, after serving as president; in 2007; in 2011, and in 2015, for a term that would see him die in office.
General elections were held in Guatemala on 9 November 2003, with a second round of the presidential election held on 28 December. Óscar Berger won the presidential election, representing the Grand National Alliance, a coalition of alliance of the Patriotic Party, the Reform Movement and the National Solidarity Party. The Alliance were also victorious in the Congressional elections, winning 47 of the 158 seats. Voter turnout was 57.9% in the Congressional elections, 58.9% in the first round of the presidential elections and 46.8% in the second.
Alfonso Antonio Portillo Cabrera is a Guatemalan politician who served as President of Guatemala from 2000 to 2004.
Álvaro Colom Caballeros was a Guatemalan engineer, businessman and politician who served as the President of Guatemala from 2008 to 2012, as well as leader of the National Unity of Hope (UNE).
Jueves negro was a violent series of political demonstrations that created havoc in Guatemala City on 24 and 25 July 2003.
Otto Fernando Pérez Molina is a Guatemalan politician and retired general, who served as the President of Guatemala from 2012 to 2015. Standing as the Patriotic Party candidate, he lost the 2007 presidential election but prevailed in the 2011 presidential election. During the 1990s, before entering politics, he served as Director of Military Intelligence, Presidential Chief of Staff under President Ramiro de León Carpio, and as chief representative of the military for the Guatemalan Peace Accords. On being elected President, he called for the legalization of drugs.
Sandra Julieta Torres Casanova is a Guatemalan politician who served as the First Lady of Guatemala from 2008 to 2011, as the wife of president Álvaro Colom. Torres ran unsuccessfully for president in 2015 and 2019. She finished in first place in the first round of the 2023 presidential election as the candidate of the National Unity of Hope (UNE) political party alongside running mate Romeo Guerra.
General elections were held in Guatemala on 6 September 2015 to elect the President and Vice President, all 158 Congress deputies, all 20 deputies to the Central American Parliament, and mayors and councils for all 338 municipalities in the country.
Iris Yassmin Barrios Aguilar is a judge and the president of one of Guatemala’s two High Risk Court Tribunals. She was the presiding judge in the case of Efraín Ríos Montt, a former dictator of Guatemala. In that trial Montt was found guilty of the genocide of indigenous Ixil Mayans; the verdict came in 2013. The trial was the first time a national judiciary tried a former head of state for genocide in his home country. However, on May 20, 2013, the Constitutional Court of Guatemala overturned the conviction, voiding all proceedings back to April 19 and ordering that the trial be "reset" to that point, pending a dispute over the recusal of judges. Officials have said that Ríos Montt's trial will resume in January 2015.
General elections were held in Guatemala on 16 June 2019, to elect the President, Congress and local councils. A second round of the presidential elections was held on 11 August 2019, since no candidate won a majority in the first round. Alejandro Giammattei won the election in the second round of voting.
The order of precedence in Guatemala is a symbolic hierarchy of officials used to direct protocol. It is regulated by Presidential Decree 07-2003 of March 11, 2003. signed by then President Alfonso Portillo, President of the Congress Efraín Ríos Montt and Former Interior Minister José Adolfo Reyes Calderón.
Mario Enrique Ríos Montt, C.M. is an emeritus auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Guatemala, public figure and human rights activist. He is the brother of the late former general Efraín Ríos Montt, a dictator accused of genocide in Guatemala during the period when he was in power from March 1982 to August 1983.
Human rights is an issue in Guatemala. The establishment of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala has helped the Attorney General prosecute extrajudicial killings and corruption. There remains widespread impunity for abusers from the Guatemalan Civil War, which ran from 1960 to 1996, and Human Rights Watch considers threats and violence against unionists, journalists and lawyers a major concern.
The 2018 Volcán de Fuego eruption was a series of volcanic explosions and pyroclastic flows from the Volcán de Fuego in Guatemala on Sunday 3 June 2018. The eruption included lahars, pyroclastic flows, and clouds of volcanic ash, which left almost no evacuation time at all and caused the death of officially nearly 200 people. It was the deadliest eruption in Guatemala since 1929.
General elections were held in Guatemala on 25 June 2023 to elect the president and vice president, all 160 seats of the Congress, all 20 members of the Central American Parliament, and mayors and councils for all 340 municipalities in the country. Incumbent president Alejandro Giammattei was constitutionally prohibited from running for a second four-year term. As no presidential candidate obtained over 50% of the vote, a second round was scheduled between the top two finishers on 20 August.
Juan Francisco Sandoval Alfaro is a Guatemalan lawyer and prosecutor who served as Head of the Special Prosecutor's Office against Impunity from September 2015 to July 2021.
The following lists events in the year 2023 in Guatemala.
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