Legal activists seek constitutional reforms to overhaul Judiciary ahead of Guatemala’s 2027 election

As the June 2027 elections draw nearer, Guatemalans are preparing for a renewed onslaught of demands for party affiliation and electoral support. One of the newest contenders for the public’s attention, however, is neither a party nor a candidate.

Poder Ciudadano (“Citizen Power” in Spanish), a legal advocacy association of lawyers, political scientists, and civil-society figures, has taken to the streets in an effort to overhaul Guatemala’s embattled Justice system. 

Their proposal? A limited reform to the Guatemalan constitution, which —at the time of writing— is backed by more than 12,000 signatures. It will be introduced to congress on September 28, after which point it will require a two-thirds legislative approval and an affirmative vote at a referendum tied to the 2027 electoral ballot. 

The question remains, however, in a country where the justice system has been described as the achilles heel of democracy, will technocratic reforms to a co-opted system ever be politically viable?

Edgar Ortiz Romero, a Guatemalan lawyer and president of Poder Ciudadano, believes they can be. In an interview with Latin America Reports, the organization’s co-founder detailed how he saw the Guatemalan public as particularly receptive to an otherwise esoteric reform package.

“We believe that the disastrous experience with [Former Attorney General of Guatemala] Consuelo Porras and the growing repression of the last few years has developed a conscience amongst the citizenry that [justice sector reform] is a salient issue,” he said. 

Porras gained notoriety for criminalizing anti-corruption activists, human rights advocates, and indigenous community leaders, and was  internationally condemned and sanctioned by the United States for her involvement in “significant corruption”.

During her eight-year tenure, court orders —according to Ortiz— increasingly became instruments of political execution and repression, being used to define everything from waste disposal regulation to guaranteeing presidential turnover.

“In 2023 for example, I was tasked to lead the legal case before the Constitutional Court that prevented the Attorney General’s office from unlawfully annulling the [general] elections. We fought the case, won it, and with that ruling, Bernardo Arevalo [the current President of Guatemala] literally took office,” he said. 

Poder Ciudadano’s diagnosis is grim. According to the reform text, the Guatemalan justice system lacks political independence, is overloaded with bureaucratic, administrative tasks, and holds a de-facto executive role, with excessive influence over the country’s politics.

This assessment has been echoed by international bodies, too. Reports by the International Bar Association and the International Association of Judges both describe structural vulnerabilities in the country’s judicial appointment systems, yielding underqualified, politically-compromised magistrates.  

Similarly, a May 2025 statement by the UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers underscored the harmful effects of concentrating administrative and disciplinary authority in the Guatemalan Supreme Court. Beyond “[distracting] magistrates from their core jurisdictional duties,” the resultant conflicts of interest and avenues for discretionality create an institutional climate where “no one is independent,” according to the report. 

The result is a justice system that’s over-politicized, ineffective, and corrupt, one responding to congressional maneuvers and political conjunctures rather than the letter of the law. 

Image credit: Poder Ciudadano

In amending 24 of the 281 articles of the Guatemalan constitution, Ortiz argues that the reform’s limited scope is one of its key political strengths. 

“The reform’s objective is not to solve the 50 problems that Guatemala faces. The problem we’re trying to solve is: How can we get judges that are more independent?”

The proposed amendments seek to achieve this in three broad ways: Firstly, by changing the way magistrates and high justice officials are chosen. 

The country’s notorious postulation commissions —denounced by experts as being ineffective, corrupt, and leading to the politicization of the country’s bar association and academia (which designate the commissions’ delegates)— would be eliminated. 

Their replacement would be interchanging appointments by Congress, the executive branch, or the high courts for Supreme Court and Constitutional Court vacancies, and merit-based appointments via civil-service exams for appellate judges. 

The designation of appellate judges by politicians, alongside the periodic renewal of the entire judicial system every five years, is described as an “institutional sin” by Ortiz.

“Magistrate designation is too synchronized with the political cycle… our expert in comparative judicial systems swears that [he] tried to find another country with a similar system and found none,” he said. 

Secondly, the reform increases magistrate term-lengths and staggers court renewals, altering magistrate-selection incentives. 

“If, instead of changing thirteen magistrates every five years, you have to change four magistrates every four years, serving for 12 years thereafter, congressmember [selection] incentives change…” Ortiz explained. 

“Since I [as a member of Congress] don’t know where I’ll be in twelve years… I’d rather [choose] the most moderate and independent judge possible.”

Finally, the reform proposes the creation of a special “judicial governance system,” specifically tasked with personnel selection and bureaucratic administration alone. 

“Foreign lawyers would laugh if I told them that the Guatemalan Supreme Court spends more of its time deliberating administrative matters rather than deciding cases…” Ortiz commented. 

The reform still has a long way to go before becoming a judicial (and political) reality. After the 28th of September, Poder Ciudadano will need the affirmative votes of 107 congressmembers and a majority of the Guatemalan electorate. 

Both are monumental hurdles. Removing congressional control over the appellate magistrature —and removing academia’s influence from the justice sector entirely— would strongly disrupt current configurations of power in Guatemala. 

Furthermore, Guatemalan constitutional plebiscites have a paltry track record. Since the country’s return to democracy following its dictatorship in 1985, none have exceeded the 18.6% electoral turnout of the failed 1999 constitutional referendum.

To overcome these challenges, Poder Ciudadano hopes to turn the reform into an electoral talking-point. Introducing and campaigning for the package during the start of the electoral cycle would, according to Ortiz, force politicians to “take a side.” 

Given that general elections tend to outperform standalone referendums on turnout, the timing of the elections could give the package a real chance to succeed. 

Even now, however, Ortiz considers the real triumph of the campaign to be its conscience-building effect. 

“In another context, justice-sector reform would be the most boring thing in the world… I think the debate [we] opened is a success in itself,” he said.  

“Because if we don’t have a citizen majority that holds these ideas to be right, then we have no hope in the future of democracy.”

Featured image credit: Organismo Judicial de Guatemala via Facebook.