2023-07-14 05:01:00
The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) of Guatemala confirmed that Bernardo Arévalo will contest the August 20 runoff against Sandra Torres, after a judge suspended the legal status of the Seed Movement. The center-left party that has Arévalo as its candidate filed an appeal with the country’s highest court, which was granted a couple of hours later, paving the way for the second round.
The suspension promoted by the Public Ministry of a party in the middle of the electoral process is unprecedented in the Central American country and, according to different social organizations, constitutes an “electoral coup attempt.” It also sparked criticism from the United States, the United Nations and the European Union.
“We are in the electoral contest. We are moving forward and we are not going to let ourselves be distracted by these illegal acts, by this corrupt group,” Arévalo, 64, said at a press conference in downtown Guatemala City. . “According to article 92 of the Electoral and Political Parties Law, a party cannot be suspended in the period between the opening of the elections and their conclusion. So that is not possible,” added the candidate from Seed Movement before the ratification of the TSE was known.
The accusation against Seed
The head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity, Rafael Curruchiche, informed on Wednesday about the accusation against Movimiento Semilla through a video. Curruchiche, sanctioned by the United States in 2022 for “obstructing investigations into acts of corruption” and “presenting apparently spurious complaints”, indicated that the complaint is due to a case in which the falsification of signatures of some five thousand people is being investigated. been affiliated with the party. The newspaper La Hora reported that there would be two arrest warrants against people linked to that group.
Given the complaint filed by the Prosecutor’s Office, the seventh criminal court ordered the suspension of the match. This court is the same one that was in charge of one of the cases against the journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, imprisoned since July 29, 2022, just five days after harshly criticizing the president’s inner circle, Alejandro Giammattei.
In another unprecedented event for the country, the Public Ministry raided the TSE on Thursday. The raid featured a striking display of armed prosecutors covering their faces with ski masks. Many of the documents seized were not inventoried according to witnesses mentioned by the Soy 502 portal. Former superintendent Juan Francisco Solórzano Foppa denounced on his social networks that the agents who carried out the raid are part of State intelligence.
Protest and appeal
A group of protesters was present this Thursday outside the headquarters of the Public Ministry to repudiate the legal action against the Seed Movement. Shouting “Consuelo, coup plotter, you are the terrorist,” those summoned expressed their discomfort with the attorney general and head of the Public Ministry, Consuelo Porras. “We are fighting to defend the Guatemalan democratic system. For the first time it is under incredible threat and very large forces are moving to destroy it, but we are here to defend it,” said Victor Castro, one of the protesters.
Representatives of the Seed Movement, for their part, filed an appeal for amparo against the decision of Judge Fredy Orellana before the Constitutional Court. The party considers that the magistrate violated Guatemalan law, which establishes that “a party may not be suspended after an election has been called and until it has been held.” Two hours later, the highest court granted the amparo to the party, which now has a free hand to continue with the second round of elections and adjudicate the posts that were elected on June 25.
The Supreme Electoral Tribunal issued a statement on Thursday maintaining the Seed Movement and the National Unity of Hope in the second round scheduled for August 20. “With democratic conviction and as an independent body, the TSE reaffirms its unwavering commitment to guarantee and defend the vote as a right and a civic duty inherent to citizenship. Without respect for the vote there is no democracy,” the magistrates said.
After resolving challenges for five days, the electoral court had already ratified the results of the first round as well as the August ballotage on Wednesday. In making that announcement, the judges said that they were unaware of the terms of the recently released ruling on the Seed Movement, and the Public Ministry said that the TSE had a legal term of 24 hours to execute it.
Neither the judges of the electoral court nor the representatives of the Public Ministry said exhaustively on Wednesday whether Arévalo could participate in the ballotage with the legal status of his party suspended, but the new statement from the electoral authorities places him in that second round.
The Guatemalan government reported that the Secretariat for Administrative Affairs and Presidential Security of the Republic will provide security to the presidential and vice-presidential candidates who will participate in the second round. He also pointed out that he is “respectful of the rule of law and the independence of powers within the republican system, for which reason he stays away from any judicial process of the corresponding bodies.”
rain of criticism
The order for the suspension of the Public Ministry led to the repudiation of different national and international actors. “It is imperative to respect the decision of the highest electoral entity and the will of Guatemalans expressed at the polls” on June 25, in the first presidential round, declared the Coordinating Committee of Commercial, Industrial and Financial Associations (CACIF) in a statement . Different social organizations such as Transparency International and Acción Ciudadana denounced that currently “an attempted “electoral coup” is being carried out, and they called on the TSE to “ignore” the judicial resolution.
The European Union criticized prosecutor Curruchiche, stating that “in the middle of the electoral process, it threatens one of the basic foundations of democracy, respect for the popular will expressed at the polls.” The head of US diplomacy for Latin America, Brian Nichols, said he was “deeply concerned by the new threats from the Public Ministry to Guatemala’s electoral democracy.”
The former first lady and presidential candidate, Sandra Torres, demanded this Thursday that the second round of elections take place on August 20, as scheduled. She also announced that she was suspending her campaign until the Semilla situation is clarified to seek the vote “on equal terms” and “in solidarity with the citizens who came to cast their vote, in solidarity with the popular will.”
The officialization of the results by the TSE was pending after the Constitutional Court ordered a new review of the electoral records on July 1st, which took place from July 4 to 6. The Guatemalan electoral process had already been affected in the previous one by the suspension of three candidacies with possibilities of winning the presidential elections.
The Semilla group was born from the demonstrations against corruption registered in the Central American country during 2015 and which ended with the fall of the government of Otto Pérez Molina (2012-2015), currently in jail. The election of a progressive candidate would constitute a break after three successive right-wing presidencies: Otto Pérez, Jimmy Morales (2016-2020) and the outgoing president Alejandro Giammattei, who is due to step down in January 2024.
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