AFP

IT COULD have been a scene from Gabriel García Márquez's novella, “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”. But there was nothing magical about the realism of the video recorded by Rodrigo Rosenberg, a Guatemalan lawyer, four days before he was shot dead on Sunday May 10th while cycling on a busy avenue. “If you are hearing this message,” he intoned, “it is because I, Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano, was assassinated by the president's private secretary, Gustavo Alejos, and his partner, Gregorio Valdez, with the approval of Álvaro Colom and Sandra de Colom [Guatemala's president and first lady]”.

Political murders are sadly nothing new in Guatemala. In the course of the 2007 presidential campaign 56 candidates, party activists and relatives were killed. During the civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996, at least 150,000 people were killed. Now Mr Rosenberg's explosive posthumous accusation has riveted the country, and threatens to plunge an already fragile democracy into crisis.

In the video, Mr Rosenberg contends that the government had offered a spot on the board of Banrural, a state-owned development bank, to Khalil Musa, one of his clients, a farmer and textile manufacturer. The proposal was subsequently withdrawn, he claimed, for fear that Mr Musa would reveal rampant corruption at the bank. Mr Musa and his daughter were murdered last month, and Mr Rosenberg alleged that both that hit and the one he correctly foresaw on himself were designed to ensure the episode was kept quiet.

The claims are particularly damaging because Mr Colom, of the centre-left, has promoted himself as a crusader against endemic corruption and violent crime. Because of its extreme poverty, location and weak institutions, Guatemala has become a haven for drug traffickers: according to America's Drug Enforcement Administration, three-quarters of South American cocaine destined for the United States passes through its territory. The narcotics trade has become a principal source of employment in the country and the profits it generates are thought to provide much of the funding for Guatemalan political campaigns. Rival gangs frequently do battle and the vast quantities of weapons they bring in have also increased violence unrelated to the drug trade: around 70 bus drivers have been killed in robberies this year. Guatemala has replaced Colombia as Latin America's leading semi-failed narco-state.

Mr Colom has vowed to tackle organised crime and clean up the state apparatus. To the dismay of numerous political allies, he has authorised a greater anti-trafficking role for the army, which was responsible for massacring thousands of civilians during the war. He has also founded a new domestic-intelligence service. Arrests and weapons seizures have consequently increased in 2009.

The president has faced criticism before. The press and opposition regularly complain that the finances of his administration's cash-transfer scheme for the poor, which is run by his wife, are insufficiently transparent. The first couple insist that everything is above board.

In the days since the video was distributed, no independent evidence has emerged to confirm Mr Rosenberg's claims of presidential complicity. Mr Colom has been defiant and denies having any part in the killing. In response to calls for him to step aside while he is investigated, he has claimed a plot exists to destabilise his government, and has vowed that he would only leave his office dead. But further suspicions were raised when local reporters found he had held an undisclosed meeting with the chief prosecutor the day after the video was made public. He acknowledged the meeting, said there was nothing unusual about it and added that he would let the investigators do their job.

Few murders in Guatemala are resolved in the courts, and the true killers of Mr Musa and his daughter and Mr Rosenberg are unlikely to face trial soon, although an American official has confirmed that the FBI will help in an investigation. Already governing from weakness thanks to a slowing economy and defections from his coalition, the president will now be dogged by accusations of murder. As a result, implementing the reforms Guatemala so desperately needs has become even harder.