Scandal Upstages Guatemala's Leader

Before he won the Guatemalan presidency on an anti-corruption platform, Jimmy Morales was his country’s best-known comedian. He had a send-up for every scoundrel. “I love you so much I’d swim across the Atlantic, cross the desert without water and face an army with nail clippers,” he declares as an impassioned suitor in a popular sketch lampooning sweet-talking politicians. “So you’ll come see me tonight?” his beloved replies. “Well, if it doesn’t rain, yes.”

It’s been raining in Guatemala lately. On Aug. 27, in a move that jolted this nation of 17 million, Morales declared the head of a crack United Nations investigative unit persona non grata and ordered him to leave the country. Morales is suspected of taking illegal campaign contributions, possibly from drug traffickers, during the 2015 election, and investigator Ivan Velasquez had been closing in on the national leader -- and, in a separate case, his brother and son. Morales is the second Guatemalan leader to run afoul of corruption sleuths in less than two years, and his case is a potential bellwether for Latin America, where an extraordinary civic revolt is helping take down an incorrigible governing class and reset the rule of law.