JIMMY MORALES

Guatemala's Aug. 20 presidential election has been bogged down in court and legal challenges despite the fact the results were clear: Progressive candidate Bernardo Arévalo won about 61% of the vote to conservative Sandra Torres' 39%.

Guatemalan police arrested the country’s prosecutor for crimes against migrants Friday, accusing him of alleged abuse of authority.

A court in Guatemala has convicted former President Otto Pérez Molina and his vice president, Roxana Baldetti, on fraud and conspiracy counts.

Once the envy of Central America for anticorruption efforts that took down a sitting president, Guatemala’s attorney general’s office has more recently been accused of blocking corruption investigations, protecting powerful interests and persecuting those who pursued the corrupt.

Guatemalan officials say they're trying to arrest a former anti-corruption prosecutor whose ouster led the U.S. to reduce cooperation with the Central American nation’s legal system.

Thousands of Guatemalans have taken to the streets in protest, blocking highways and calling for a national strike over the government’s apparent unwillingness to tackle corruption.

Anti-corruption prosecutor Juan Francisco Sandoval has fled Guatemala, arriving in neighboring El Salvador just hours after he was removed from his post.

FILE - In this Aug. 27, 2017 file photo, Constitutional Court President Jose Francisco de Mata Vela leads a press conference in Guatemala City. Selecting the new members of the Constitutional Court has roiled Guatemalan politics since last year. The members will hold their seats for five years and the selection process has been filled with accusations of collusion and corruption. One was for the rector of University of San Carlos de Guatemala, Murphy Paíz, one of those who would help choose new Constitutional Court members, for allegedly colluding on votes. In Guatemala’s justice system, everything can eventually arrive at the Constitutional Court, he said.

With the departure of the United Nations-backed anti-corruption commission last year that supported a war against some of the countrys most powerful political, business and criminal leaders, Guatemalas pursuers have become the pursued. The U.N.-sponsored International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala left the country in September, after then-President Jimmy Morales decided not to renew its mandate. Both prosecutors are in the United States, which is also where Guatemalas former Attorney General Thelma Aldana went after leading Guatemala's anti-corruption fight. It is a clear attempt by criminal and corrupt networks to take control of the justice system to obtain impunity and protection for themselves," she said. With the justice system under attack from outside forces and from within, President Alejandro Giammattei has remained on the sidelines even though its his party that controls Congress.