A woman holds a poster outside the doors of the Ministry of State in Guatemala City this Thursday calling for the putschists to be jailed.CRISTINA CHIQUIN (Portal)
The attempt to exclude the candidacy of Bernardo Arévalo of the Seed movement from the second round of elections in Guatemala has caused concern among the Central American country’s democratic forces. Opposition officials, lawyers, international organizations and the Joe Biden administration are rejecting the decision of a court that on Wednesday disqualified the progressive formation that won 12% of the vote in the June 25 election. The party filed a constitutional complaint to challenge the verdict, and the electoral court this Thursday moved to overturn the judge’s order, allowing the second round of voting, scheduled for August 20, to continue. In any case, there is a risk of an imminent breach of the constitutional order. The seed movement, which sprung up in the heat of protests against the country’s institutional change in 2015, is facing a criminal case brought by Rafael Curruchiche, a prosecutor sanctioned by the United States for corruption.
According to former foreign minister Gabriel Orellana, who is now a lawyer, Guatemala is one step away from a tech coup. “It was tough, but it worked out in the end,” he says. He comes to this conclusion after examining the order of the judge who wanted to blow up the formation of Arévalo, who appealed to the Constitutional Court for Amparo to prevent the electoral authorities from complying with an “illegal and unconstitutional” provision . According to the lawyers interviewed, following the orders of a judge who interferes in the functions of the electoral tribunal constitutes a violation of the Basic Law and is also unlawful, since no party can be suspended during an election process. In this context, the attempt to exclude Arévalo from the election campaign aims, according to the most widespread analysis, to impose a second round between former First Lady Sandra Torres (Conservative) and a pro-government candidate close to the current President, Alejandro Giammattei.
Before a population awaited the official announcement of the results of the first round of voting, which was confirmed by a re-examination, the state ministry released a video on Wednesday in which prosecutor Curruchiche announced that a court had ruled the disqualification of the Seed movement with the argument of the alleged forgery of signatures of party members.
The Supreme Electoral Court this Thursday presented an appeals chamber with a motion to overturn the decision. “The judge should not even have known about the dissolution of a political organization,” said registrar Ramiro Muñoz at a press conference, because that is a power that is solely the responsibility of the electoral authority. Nor can the annulment be made when the procedure is already underway and the decree making official the results of the candidates who advance to the second round has already been issued, he explained. According to Muñoz, the election authority will also file a lawsuit in the Constitutional Court to defend Magna Carta, as it would any other party, to defend the supremacy of decisions that fall solely within the jurisdiction of the Citizens’ Registry. The registrar looked nervous and when asked if he was scared. He denied this, recalling that his office enjoys immunity from possible prosecution for failure to comply with the order, which several lawyers and the court itself have ruled unlawful.
Concern about this development reached Washington. In addition to expressing concern about this situation, the U.S. Department of State stated that these actions “endanger the legitimacy of the electoral process at the heart of Guatemalan democracy, which must be promoted and defended in accordance with the Constitution of Guatemala.” Guatemala and the Inter-American Democratic Charter”. “The will of the Guatemalan people, expressed through the results of the June 25 elections, must be respected,” a statement warned.
“Under no circumstances will we comply with a wrong and unlawful decision,” said Bernardo Arévalo. The 64-year-old sociologist is running as the party’s presidential candidate, which is putting forward a progressive proposal for change in the face of the system of corruption and authoritarianism that has intensified during the Giammattei government. More than a hundred law enforcement officials, human rights defenders and journalists are in exile, while other former anti-corruption officials have been imprisoned, including former prosecutor Virginia Laparra, who Amnesty International has declared a “prisoner of conscience”.
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If it rises, they lower it
In this context of authoritarian drift, more than 5.5 million Guatemalans went to the polls on June 25 and decided that the National Unity candidate of Hope, Sandra Torres (15% of the vote) and Arévalo (12%) would contest the election become presidency in the second round, which is scheduled for August 20th. In the run-up to the election campaign, three candidates who had the opportunity to vote were excluded by court decisions that were widely criticized as arbitrary and opportunistic. Such is the case, for example, with rancher Carlos Pineda: when he was at the top of the polls, former Congressman Manuel Baldizón, who was serving a sentence in the United States for money laundering, filed a lawsuit to get him out of the running.
Arévalo surprised with 12% of the vote, becoming the candidate that neither the polls nor the analysts could see in the second round. This position put the Seed movement in the crosshairs of the so-called Corrupt Pact, or the corporation in power that is credited with converging to retain control of the institutions. These are people appointed by President Giammattei or by the Alliance of Deputies who have a majority in Congress and who correspond to the interests of the President or the official party. The Corrupt Pact “is an informal alliance of politicians, a bureaucratic elite and businessmen, as well as some representatives of criminal networks,” says former foreign minister and political analyst Edgar Gutiérrez.
One such actor is Baldizón himself, according to Gutiérrez. In addition to his criminal past in the United States, the former congressman has two pending cases in Guatemala, one of them over alleged bribery in the Odebrecht case. Baldizón also initiated legal action with the Constitutional Court to suspend official publication of the election results until vote counts were repeated across the country, delaying the entire process by at least a week.
At the same time, a “sophisticated” and “crude” putsch was started in Guatemala without a single battle tank and without violence, emphasized former Foreign Minister Gabriel Orellana in statements to EL PAÍS. Like Orellana, dozens of legal professionals turned to social media to present their legal arguments, unanimously concluding: canceling a match during an ongoing second round is illegal, unconstitutional, and presents Guatemala with a kind of technical coup.
The conversation left the area of the lawyers during the night of Wednesday. Business chambers, social organizations, domestic and foreign election observers, students and the general public took to social media to denounce what they believe was a scandal created by prosecutors, who found the support of Judge Fredy Orellana, to destroy Guatemala’s fragile democracy in Danger.
The imposition of candidates
“The Ministry of State and in particular the Special Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity are responsible for implementing this dirty strategy to undermine the electoral process and overthrow Semilla,” says analyst Renzo Rosal. This action opens the possibility of any scenario and “dispels doubts about the despicable performance of the State Department and especially the Curruchiche prosecutor,” says Rosal. In his opinion, they are trying to falsify the results of the first ballot and that “before the disappearance of Semilla, they are trying to put Manuel Conde in the vote”, the candidate of Giammattei’s party, who ended up third with 7.83% of the Voices.
The scenario devised by voter Aquiles Faillace goes further and sets January 14 as the critical day on which Giammattei must hand over the baton and leave power. “Even if Bernardo Arévalo wins the election, he won’t become president,” he predicts. His hypothesis is that the prosecution is building a false case against Arévalo, that Congress will strip him of his immunity and appoint another president. The Vamos party led by Giammattei won the majority of MPs in Parliament and second place went to the National Unity of Hope party led by Sandra Torres.
Torres herself responded to the judge’s decision with a statement from the National Executive Committee, calling on the electoral tribunal to “conduct the electoral process in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and the Electoral Code.”
Between accusations of illegality and an attempted coup that presupposes the repeal of the anti-system political proposal, citizens are trying to trust a court whose image has been tarnished by the application of unequal and arbitrary criteria, local observers say by corruption charges. Days before the vote, the New York Times announced that an election judge had gone to the US Embassy to denounce President Giammattei’s bribes.
With a dose of distrust and a dose of hope, the population is trying to find an ally in the Supreme Electoral Court who will defend the votes cast in the elections. “Elections are won and defended by elections, that’s democracy,” Court President Irma Palencia said at a news conference, expressing her commitment to ensuring trial and respecting legality.
“We call on the Supreme Electoral Court to resolutely exercise its role as the highest authority,” emphasized the building chamber in one of the communiqués distributed on Wednesday evening, which, like others, reflects the mood of the citizens. This Thursday, attention and protests are focused on the electoral court, which must respond to a decision that experts have described as clearly unlawful; the State Department and the courts, the actors who will decide the collapse of the constitution or the rupture of the electoral system in a country living through the darkest hours of its democratic history.
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