A request for protection has arrived at the Constitutional Court (CC) seeking to suspend the budget increase of Q14,151,700,391 that the Congress of the Republic approved as a matter of national urgency on August 27, which gave rise to decree 17-2024.
The legal action was filed on August 29 by attorney Karen Marie Fisher Pivaral arguing that it was “in clear violation” of what was ordered by the CC and the legislative procedure. A bill and a decree were approved with “identical terms and content” to those that the court had suspended days before.
It should be remembered that on August 14, the deputies to the Congress of the Republic interrupted the interpellation of the Minister of the Interior, Francisco Jiménez, to approve, as a matter of national urgency, decree 16-2024, which provided for a budget increase of Q14,451 million requested by the Government.
The approval was questioned by deputies and civil organizations who filed five amparo actions before the CC to stop it. On August 26, the highest court resolved provisionally suspend the budgetary adjustment.
In a second attempt to obtain more budget for the Executive, on August 27 the deputies of the ruling party managed to put on the legislative agenda a new initiative for expansion that obtained 113 votes to be considered as a matter of national urgency. At the end of the session it was approved with 114 votes.
The request for protection presented by Fisher Pivaral states that “what the Congress of the Republic did was to avoid, through a means not authorized by law, the decision of the Constitutional Court.”
Furthermore, by approving the extension, the deputies would have disobeyed an order that the CC had already agreed to.
“In this case, the same project was presented with a different initiative number, and the same project was presented and is currently suspended, which violates the legislative procedure and makes the granting of the protection viable,” the document says, and that now there are two budgetary extensions “exactly the same with two legislative decrees of different dates and with different numbers.”
For this reason, Fisher Pivaral is asking that the approval of bill 6439 and the creation and approval of decree 17-2024, which contains the budget expansion by the Legislature, be suspended.
Attempts were made to obtain the position of the President of the Guatemalan Congress, Nery Ramos, but he did not answer phone calls.
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