PRESIDENT COLOM ALLEGES ASSASSINATION PLOT

C O N F I D E N T I A L GUATEMALA 000050 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/15/2018 TAGS: PGOV MARR PTER PINR MOPS GT SUBJECT: PRESIDENT COLOM ALLEGES ASSASSINATION PLOT REF: GUATEMALA 1593 Classified By: Political Officer Lance Hegerle for reasons 1.4(b,d) ¶1. (U) In the days leading up to his one-year anniversary in office, President Alvaro Colom has engaged in an increasingly strident public war of words with opposition leaders and the press. The tiff started when Colom responded to press criticism of First Lady Sandra Torres de Colom by calling her critics "ignorant, stupid and politically illiterate." He also made allegations that opposition leaders and critics were taking part in a destabilization plot to undermine his administration. In a January 12 radio address Colom raised the stakes by claiming that this "destabilization plot" included a plan to assassinate him last December. ¶2. (U) Colom asserted that the plot was hatched in November of 2007 by organized criminal elements soon after he defeated "their candidate" in the presidential election. He gave no details of the purported assassination attempt, but asserted that his intelligence apparatus had neutralized the threat. On January 13, local papers ran articles outlining Colom's claims, along with opposition assertions that Colom was simply seeking to draw attention away from his administration's lack of progress after nearly one-year in office. On January 14, during his first year in review speech before Congress, Colom made no mention of the alleged plot and offered an apology for two of the offensive words he had used to categorize the opposition. While his aim was probably to de-escalate the war of words, he made it clear that while he regretted his choice of words, he did not apologize for the "reasons and motives" that led him to use them. ¶3. (C) On January 14, the Ambassador spoke with Ricardo Marroquin, head of the SAAS (which provides security to the President and Vice President.) Marroquin said there was no information regarding a threat against Colom; rather certain unnamed individuals in the government had gone a step too far in analyzing opposition criticism of the President. The Ambassador told Marroquin that we had not received any information about such a threat. ¶4. (C) COMMENT: Although rumors of coup plots and political intrigue are common in Guatemala, the Embassy has received no credible information to suggest that there was a plan to assassinate Colom, nor has the President ever raised this concern in meetings with us. Colonel Douglas Alberto Gonzalez Monzon, the commander of the military's Presidential Honor Guard, informed DATT that while he had heard the recent rumors, he had no intelligence to support them. He added that neither his command nor the civilian agency charged with Presidential Security (SAAS) believe the rumors have any validity, and they have not altered their security procedures. It is possible that Colom is continuing to react to reports of "coup plotting" he recently received that caused him to change the upper levels of the Guatemalan Military (reftel). Embassy has received no confirmation that those reports were accurate, and it is possible that they were prepared for Colom by presidential advisers wishing to benefit from command changes in the Military. Colom chose not to mention the threats in his one-year anniversary speeches January 14. McFarland