“I see it as unlikely that the elections will be repeated, but in Guatemala nothing can be predicted”: constitutional lawyer

2023-07-04 07:39:04

Tension rises in Guatemala. The supreme electoral court formalized the suspension of the vote count and the formalization of the electoral results after the order of the Constitutional Court.

The first injunctions presented by opposition candidates for the presidency were rejected and now, tBoth citizens and national and international political organizations fear that what they call a violation of democracy will worsen.

To talk about this topic, Edgar Ortiz Romero, a constitutional lawyer and university professor, connected to La Tarde de NTN24, who pointed out that the country is in real uncertainty due to the decisions made by the Constitutional Courtbecause although there are deadline dates to resolve these disagreements, the suspension decision was made accepting unfounded petitions and bypassing the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

“We are supposed to have a body called the Supreme Electoral Tribunal which, as the years have passed, is no longer supreme because it seems that now the courts make decisions on electoral matters regardless of whether there is a specialized authority for them. What has happened is that everything related to vote counting is not done by the public authorities, it is done by temporary bodies made up of citizens called electoral boards and they were about to send the results to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to certify that everything is in order and now the Constitutional Court appears, accepting petitions from not very well-founded parties that have dedicated themselves to saying that they do not agree with the results, the law offers an opportunity to defend themselves and they did not make use of this possibility, ”explained the jurist.

In addition, he referred to the electoral future of the country, since it is feared that the elections will be annulled and the country will continue under the control of the current government, that of President Alejandro Giammattei: “Technically there should not be a repetition of the electionsbut the political reading is that the Court leaves a door open that says that, if in that phase of recounting it is considered opportune for the case of annulment of elections to proceed, then proceed. I see it as unlikely, but making predictions in Guatemala is a bit risky”.

“Constitutionally, this is not viable, since it says that, if there is no president-elect on January 14, Congress would take over on an interim basis and would have to designate a person to occupy the position while the impasse is resolved, If it were to take place, we would already be facing a coup d’état”, the guest asserted about the possibility of Giammattei staying in the Presidency again.