Guatemala City – The head of Guatemala’s main opposition party says the recent slaying of one of its legislators was part of an attempt by drug traffickers to force their way into the party.
In an interview with the daily El Periodico, Alvaro Colom, leader of the National Unity of Hope (UNE) party, said that drug traffickers were responsible for shooting to death one of the party’s lawmakers, Mario Pivaral, last April 6.
Colom said Pivaral opposed admitting drug-linked individuals into the center-leftist party, suggesting that that was the motive for his slaying.
“They killed our Mario Pivaral and it was the drug traffickers, I’m convinced of it. But the UNE will not allow the easy money into our organization,” Colom said.
Pivaral, legislator for the northern province of Alta Verapaz, was assassinated by two men riding a motorcycle outside party headquarters on the south side of the capital.
The slain legislator, Colom said, “was an honest man and did not allow (the drug traffickers) into the organization.”
Colom challenged Interior Minister Carlos Vielman to reveal the names of legislators in congress whom the authorities are investigating for possible connections to the drug trade.
“In November last year government authorities mentioned four lawmakers involved in drug trafficking,” but only identified Manuel Castillo, the UNE legislator who was expelled from the party immediately after this became known.
Colom denied suggestions by the attorney general’s office, which is investigating the Pivaral murder, that the death was related to internal problems within the party.
“Being hounded by drug traffickers was an internal problem, but it was not a problem of our party. There are no thugs or murderers in the UNE,” he said.
Colom, who according to a voter preference survey published by the press last week is currently favored to win the 2007 elections by a wide margin, said that although they might kill him he would not admit drug trafficking groups into the party.
The same week in April when Pivaral was murdered, three other UNE legislators said they had received death threats.
“As legislators (of the UNE), we’re stunned – we fear for our lives and ask who will be next,” the leader of the party’s congressional group, Raul Robles, said at the time.
Legislators who received death threats, Robles said, were the party’s deputy secretary general Eduardo Meyer, Cesar Fajardo, and himself.
The threats, the congressman said, started arriving in mid-2004, but recently “they have been increasing in number.” EFE
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