2023-08-21 03:30:04
The voting centers in Guatemala closed this Sunday afternoon after an electoral day with some incidents and in which the next president of the Central American country will be defined.
The closure of the voting centers was scheduled for 6:00 p.m. local time (00:00 GMT on Monday morning), as established by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.
The vote count, which will last several hours, will define the next Guatemalan president between former first lady Sandra Torres Casanova, of the National Unity of Hope, and academic Bernardo Arévalo de León, of the Seed Movement.
The main incident on election day came at the end of the afternoon, with the explosion of two homemade devices in two voting centers on the outskirts of Guatemala City, with no injuries or deaths.
The reports from the local and international election observation missions preliminarily confirmed, at the stroke of noon, that the electoral process progressed normally for much of the day.
According to the unofficial Electoral Observation Mission of Guatemala, made up of a group of social and civil organizations, 99.6% of the polling stations in Guatemala opened on time and without inconveniences in the civic day of this Sunday.
The morning report released by the local observation mission also indicates that the National Hope Unit had prosecutors in 96% of the tables, while Semilla is present in 82% of them.
The current electoral process has been the most controversial in Guatemala since the implementation of democracy in 1986, clouded by the leadership of the Public Ministry (Prosecutor’s Office) which, since July 12, he has tried to cancel the Seed Movement and prevent the participation of Arévalo de León.
Guatemala does not carry out measurements of voter participation during election day and it is not until the closing of the results when data is known in this regard.
The vote counting process could last between two and five hours, according to the same Supreme Electoral Tribunal.
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