Patriotic Party (Guatemala)

The Patriotic Party ("Partido Patriota") is a political party in Guatemala. It was founded on 24 February 2001 by retired Army General Otto Pérez Molina.

2003 election

At the legislative elections held on 9 November 2003, the party was part of the Grand National Alliance which won 24.3% of the vote and 47 out of 158 Congressional seats. The presidential candidate of the alliance, Óscar Berger Perdomo, won 34.3% at the presidential elections of the same day. He won 54.1% at the second round and was elected president.

2007 election

In the 9 September 2007 legislative election, the Patriotic Party won 15.91% of the vote and 30 seats in Congress. Presidential candidate General Otto Pérez Molina placed second in the presidential race with 23.5% of the vote, eventually losing in the 4 November run-off to centrist Álvaro Colom of the National Unity of Hope (UNE).

Armed attacks on the Patriotic Party

On 11 November 2000, Pérez Molina's son, Otto Pérez Leal, was attacked by gunmen while driving with his wife and infant daughter. On 21 February 2001, three days before Pérez Molina was scheduled to launch his new political party, masked gunmen attacked and wounded his daughter Lissette. The same day, masked gunmen shot and killed Patricia Castellanos Fuentes de Aguilar, who had just departed her house after meeting with Pérez Molina's wife, Rosa María Leal. On 14 March, four armed men shot and killed Jorge Rosal, a regional leader of the PP, as he left the party's Guatemala City headquarters. Four days earlier, Rosal had participated in a march with other members of the PP involved in the Civic Movement, a political association founded to protest government corruption. On 15 May, the widower of Patricia Castellanos, Francisco Aguilar Alonzom, who had been investigating his wife's death and had formed a citizens' group opposed to violence and impunity, was shot and killed in his car. Human rights groups claimed that the killings were politically motivated. [http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2001/wha/8344.htm and http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2002/18333.htm]

On 9 October 2007, armed assailants shot and killed Aura Marina Salazar Cutzal, secretary to the Patriotic Party's congressional delegation and assistant to Pérez Molina, along with a professional bodyguard, Valerio Ramiro Castañón. Salazar Cutzal, 33, was a Kaqchikel Mayan Indian and a mother of two. Pérez Molina blamed organized crime for the killing and said it was the eighth murder of a member of his party. [http://www.elperiodico.com.gt/es/20071009/actualidad/44459/ and http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/08/america/LA-GEN-Guatemala-Election-Violence.php]

References

External links

* [http://www.partidopatriota.com/ Official web site Partido Patriota]