Bernardo Arévalo, candidate of the Semilla party
A Guatemalan court on Wednesday disqualified Social Democrat candidate Bernardo Arévalo’s Semilla party, effectively barring the candidate from running in the second round scheduled for August 20 against former First Lady Sandra Torres, also a Social Democrat. The announcement was made by Rafael Curruchiche, head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity (Feci), who requested the disqualification. The court decision comes after the parties who lost in the first round last month appealed, delaying the declaration of Social Democrats Sandra Torres and Bernardo Arévalo as winners. Prosecutor Curruchiche, target of the US sanctions, justified the measure against Semilla with alleged irregularities in the collection of signatures for the legalization. The court’s intervention sparked an uproar among Guatemalans and led to the suspension of the second round of elections scheduled for August 20.
Semilla filed a protective order with the Constitutional Court against Judge Fredy Orellana’s decision. O The party believes the judge violated Guatemalan law, which states that “a party cannot be suspended after an election has been called and until such election has taken place.” “What they are trying to do is to fabricate a case like the one we are debating to try to overthrow the party and Bernardo Arévalo’s candidacy,” said Semilla MP Samuel Pérez. After the party’s disqualification was announced, Arévalo’s supporters demonstrated on Wednesday night in front of the TSE headquarters in the capital. “We are on our feet and fighting to defend the Guatemalan democratic system. “For the first time it faces an incredible threat and very large forces are about to destroy it, but we are here to defend it,” protester Victor Castro told AFP. The USA classified the court decision by the Guatemalan Ministry of State as a “new threat to democracy”.
A The court decision sparked demonstrations in the country and criticism from the United States, along with warnings from Guatemalan business leaders and the European Union. “It is imperative to respect the decision of the highest electoral body and the will of Guatemalans expressed at the ballot box,” the Coordinating Committee of Trade, Industrial and Financial Confederations (CACIF) declared on June 25 in the first round of the presidency Opinion. The EU criticized prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche, who called for Semilla’s expulsion from the judiciary, on the grounds that “in the midst of the electoral process, one of the foundations of democracy is being jeopardized: respect for the will of the people expressed in the ballot box”. In a note, the European bloc called for “an end to the judicialization of elections with maneuvers that legally dubiously fit the Guatemalan legal system, and that the public authorities guarantee the free exercise of the right to vote without obstacles of any kind.”
Unexpected second round
The Left’s entry into Round 2 came as a surprise as polls didn’t indicate it was a possibility. Arévalo de León received 12.19% of the votes versus 15.12% for Sandra. According to polls, Arévalo de León and his group Semilla, who left the anticorruption fight in Guatemala in 2015, would finish seventh or eighth, but support in urban areas was key to their reaching the second round. None of the polls released during the election process indicated that Arévalo de León, whose father Juan José Arévalo Bermejo ruled the country between 1945 and 1951, could stay in the running unless there was an immediate victory. The period when his father was president is considered a vernal period in the political history of the Central American nation.