GUATEMALA’S Supreme Court backed action to strip President Otto Perez Molina of legal immunity on Tuesday as a corruption scandal rocks the country.

Following the court’s unanimous ruling in favour of a request by Attorney General Thelma Aldana, congress will vote for a second time on whether to allow the right-wing Patriotic Party president to be impeached and charged.

An attempt several weeks ago to start impeachment proceedings, led by Congressman Amilcar Pop, was voted down.

“We have hit a really serious political crisis,” said former vice-president Eduardo Stein. “Never before have prosecutors publicly requested lifting the immunity of the president.”

Mr Perez’s former vice-president Roxana Baldetti was formally charged on Tuesday with conspiracy, customs fraud and bribery.

The charges relate to allegations that she took £2.4 million in bribes to allow firms to dodge import duties as part of a conspiracy dubbed “La Linea.”

The allegations are based in part on recordings of some 88,000 tapped phone calls.

Ms Baldetti’s lawyer Mario Cano claimed the charges were politically motivated and said none of the recordings carried her voice.

She resigned the vice-presidency in May. Her former aide and alleged conspiracy ringleader Juan Carlos Monzon Rojas is currently a fugitive.

Protesters demanding Mr Perez’s resignation blocked roads on the outskirts of Guatemala City as the charges were announced.

General elections are due on September 6, but Committee for Peasant Unity (CUC) general secretary Daniel Pascual Hernandez called for them to be postponed until electoral reforms have been implemented.

“Under these conditions, the elections will have a high degree of illegitimacy, illegality and impunity,” he said.

The CUC is also calling for a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution.

The Social and Popular Assembly, of which the CUC is a part, said that the electoral commission had not done enough to weed out candidates with criminal records.

Meanwhile, judges ruled that former military dictator Efrain Rios Montt, whose lawyers claim is suffering from dementia, can be retried on charges of genocide and war crimes, but in absentia, in camera and with no threat of prison.

Mr Perez is also an alleged war criminal. Like Mr Rios Montt, he was a graduate of the US Army School of the Americas and an alleged CIA asset.