Óscar Berger
Óscar Berger was president of Guatemala from 2004 to 2008, the former mayor of the capital who beat Ríos Montt's party in the election of 2003, in which the general himself had been allowed to stand by a court that ignored the constitution and came third. He governed four years of what passed, in Guatemala, for calm. There were the free-trade agreement with the United States ratified in 2005, the growth of five per cent, and the mining law that let the Canadians open the Marlin gold mine over the objections of the Maya communities around it. There was the invitation to the United Nations, in 2006, to set up the International Commission against Impunity, the CICIG, which would prosecute two of his successors. The record also had Hurricane Stan in October 2005, which buried the village of Panabaj under a mudslide with fourteen hundred people in it. There was the murder rate that rose every year to forty-five a hundred thousand. There were the three Salvadoran congressmen murdered in Guatemala in February 2007 by policemen, who were then murdered in their cell. The army was reduced by half, which the generals did not forgive. He was born in Guatemala City into a family of coffee and sugar planters of Belgian descent. He read law at the Rafael Landívar university, was mayor of the capital from 1991 to 1999 for Arzú's party. He lost the election of 1999 to Portillo before winning the one of 2003 on a coalition of the business right that fell apart within a year of his taking office. That left him to govern with whichever congressmen could be bought that week. He handed over to Colom in January 2008, the first transfer from one elected civilian to another of the opposite side. He has kept out of politics since, a planter again. His commission is the thing he is remembered for. The country's elite spent the next decade trying to undo it.
- Lived: 1946 CE – ?
- Nationality: Guatemalan
- Roles: president, lawyer, politician
