10-09-2015: Latin American Weekly Report

President Pérez Molina’s resignation (see box below) and the inauguration the same day of Vice-President Alejandro Maldonado as his replacement to serve out the remainder of his four-year term, ending in January 2016, was well received by the international community. The US embassy said in a 3 September statement that it would work with Maldonado and congratulated “Guatemalans and their institutions for handling the crisis peacefully”. A statement issued the same day by Luis Almagro, the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), highlighted “the example set by the people and institutions of Guatemala, who resolved their recent crisis through the institutional path and observing due process”.