The Special Mission of the Organization of American States (OAS) for the Strengthening of Democratic Institutions in Guatemala sent a letter to the Nominating Commission for the election of the Attorney General and Head of the Public Ministry within the framework of its accompaniment mandate. The OAS warns that the legitimacy of this procedure, as well as its outcome, will depend on the methodological soundness and the correspondence with constitutional and international standards, in a context marked by the imminent simultaneous appointment of senior magistrates in 2026, which demands a reinforced standard of objectivity and capacity. The international organization points out that the current evaluation model for the selection of the Attorney General in Guatemala is based primarily on formal and quantifiable criteria, such as academic degrees and years of professional experience, without giving sufficient weight to verifiable indicators of independence, suitability, and honorability. The technical analysis carried out by the Mission evidenced a structural mismatch between the declared substantive criteria and the elements truly considered in the evaluation. We recommend reading:
Among the main effects of this methodological design, the OAS highlighted four aspects:
- Indeterminacy in substantive criteria: there are no clear rules or objective indicators to assess attributes such as independence, suitability, and commitment to human rights and the Rule of Law.
- Reduction in the capacity to qualitatively differentiate professional experience, as the measurement focuses on chronology and not on factors such as strategic management capacity or managed institutional complexity.
- Limited conceptualization of integrity, evaluated solely by the absence of disciplinary records rather than an active commitment to ethical values, transparency, and accountability.
- Procedural vulnerability in the qualitative phase, where interviews and psychometric tests lack public and comparable criteria, which can open the door to discretion and future questioning.
Observations and recommendations
The mission recommended:
- Operationalize constitutional and international criteria of capacity, suitability, honesty, independence, and impartiality, with concrete and verifiable indicators.
- Rebalance the evaluation of professional experience, incorporating parameters such as responsibility in decision-making, institutional management, verifiable results, and commitment to human rights.
- Expand the definition of integrity and include explicit rules on public ethics, declaration and management of interests, conflict prevention, and clear valuation rules.
- Methodologically shield the interview stage, with public rubrics, comparable questions, and individually motivated scoring to reduce discretion.
