2023-08-30 20:06:00
For members of the Movimiento Semilla party, the greatest risk behind the legal actions of the Public Ministry (MP), which intends to cancel the party, is the revocation of the awards of all posts by popular election that the organization won in the 2023 General Elections .
Panorama general. If the temporary suspension of Semilla ends in cancellation, the problem will be that the 23 elected deputies will assume as congressmen without a party in the Legislative Body, a requirement to hold a position on the Board of Directors, preside over work commissions, participate in the instance of block leaders , or integrate the Human Rights Commission.
The Semilla prosecutor and re-elected deputy in PARLACEN, Juan Gerardo Guerrero, mentions that there is another more serious issue in the background: the breach of the constitutional order, by not allowing them to take office on January 14, 2024.
Guerrero is protected by article 140 of the Constitution of the Republic, which establishes that Guatemala “is a free, independent and sovereign State… its system of government is republican, democratic and representative”.
It also mentions article 141: “Sovereignty lies in the people who delegate it, for its exercise, to the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Bodies. Subordination between them is prohibited. Therefore, according to Guerrero, “the 2,442,718 Guatemalans who chose the binomial give it legality and legitimacy. To do the opposite is to go against the republic.”
In perspective. Until now, Semilla has presented more than 28 legal actions in the MP and courts, most of them denied, due to the “total blocking and lack of access to the file against the political organization,” says Guerrero.
The actions range from administrative complaints against the staff of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity (FECI); Amparos, due enforcement, clarifications and extensions of resolutions; a recusal, an unconstitutionality in a specific case, a conflict of jurisdiction, a criminal complaint, a request for a preliminary trial, a habeas corps and a complaint filed in the office of the Attorney General for the bad practices of the FECI, underlines the Semilla lawyer .
The most recent are the two appeals filed in the Citizens’ Registry (RC), against the decision of the director of that unit to provisionally suspend Semilla. It is an appeal for annulment, which fits during electoral times, and an appeal, outside this period. “We opted for both because of the lack of certainty in the conclusion of the electoral process,” said Guerrero.
The amparo presented in the First Chamber of Criminal Appeals, against the decision of the Seventh Court, is still pending; the criminal complaint against the head of the FECI, Rafael Curruchiche; the request for a preliminary hearing against the judge in charge of the process and the due execution of the amparo granted by the Constitutional Court to protect Semilla until the conclusion of the electoral process, “which the director of the RC ignored and exceeded his duties” , considers Guerrero.
Now what? Guerrero criticizes the work of the Center for Auxiliary Services of the Administration of Justice (Criminal Management), since there are other courts, the requests of the FECI “are known by two courts: the Seventh and the Tenth.”
He questions the unilateral hearing carried out by the Seventh Court and of which they only had access to the audio. The justification for the suspension of Semilla and the raids that preceded it lasted less than a minute, according to the source.
It does not rule out continuing to denounce the “abuse of power” and the “prevaricato” through more protections and pre-trial requests. “Apparently, we are not procedural subjects, but we are persecuted, without the right to defense and punished as guilty,” he points out.
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