Former Guatemalan presidential candidate Carlos Pineda during a campaign event. Moises Castillo (AP)
The chance of winning Guatemala’s presidency vanished in less than a month for Carlos Pineda, who had led the polls since early May. The 23% of the vote that gave him the power to advance to the second round also became his greatest vulnerability, putting him at the center of legal action to strip him of his candidacy.
Pineda, a provincial businessman who has risen in the polls thanks to his campaign on TikTok, is the third presidential candidate to denounce the institutional block on participation in the June 25 elections, and the cancellation of his candidacy is making the voices louder , which have previously denounced fraud, the use of arbitrary criteria to exclude inconvenient candidates for the system. “The election takes on the character of a restricted election, in which the electoral authority becomes the first and major voter in the process and the citizen election is limited to the preselected offer.” The organization recently proclaimed Mirador Electoral.
Fallen candidates, who are calling the electoral process a “fraud,” include former President Álvaro Arzú’s son Roberto Arzu García-Granados and indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera. The three have been legally expelled, but under circumstances many opponents see as arbitrary and in the context of “institutional cooptation,” Arzú said, while Cabrera and Pineda went further, speaking of symptoms of a “dictatorship.”
With less than a month left for voting, the Constitutional Court has clarified the situation of two of the three presidential candidates who are entitled to contest the first places in the election. Pineda is expelled due to errors in the party meetings, which the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) allowed and which were not an impediment until exposed by the party of Manuel Baldizón, the former MP who was serving a prison sentence in the United States and returned in 2022 to resume his political influence.
Baldizón’s complaint came on May 7, five days after Pineda made headlines with his lead in the polls. Pineda was set to represent the presidency with the Cambio party founded by the children of Baldizón, although he was seeking a seat in the Citizen Prosperity party after a rupture in ties last January. This is a group led by Lilian García, an MP close to National Unity of Hope party presidential candidate Sandra Torres, who ranks second in some polls. The party that Pineda selected was close to cancellation but was revived, albeit with flaws that could border on the illegal.
In the ruling, which Pineda omits, the Constitutional Chamber requests the opening of an investigation to determine whether the mistakes made by the electoral authority are unlawful and calls on it to require parties to comply with the conditions in order to enact them prevent In the future, the court must intervene in the “election diversion”.
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Eliminate competitors
Indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera and former human rights lawyer Jordan Rodas were excluded from the election campaign because the electoral tribunal invalidated the solvency of the management of public funds that Rodas presented for his candidacy. Rodas’ public role was questioned only days after the Movement for the People’s Liberation (MLP) announced its vice presidential nomination.
Cabrera came fourth in the 2019 presidential election with a proposal to form the plurinational state and nationalize public resources. Fifth place went to Roberto Arzú García-Granados, who presented himself as a “disruptive option that rejects corruption”. and that he intended to continue the legacy of his father, former President Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen of the conservative Unionist Party.
The 53-year-old businessman and former football club president says he was dropped because he stood a chance of finishing in the top spot in the vote and because he continued his political involvement despite the threat of imprisonment, he told you have denounced other candidates.
Arzú-García Granados of the Podemos party has described the current electoral process as “modern electoral fraud” based on “institutional cooptation” that excludes and favors certain candidates.
Over the months, the adaptation of parts in the electoral scenario became evident, through the exclusion of different binomials and the application of differentiated criteria depending on who is involved, which constitutes one of the elements of systemic fraud. , explains the political scientist Mack.
Several political actors feel that candidates who do not have the approval of the party alliance, which would favor Zury Ríos Sosa, the daughter of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, and Manuel Conde, the Vamos party candidate, are being blocked. the force that led Alejandro Giammattei to the presidency. Political scientist Luis Mack explains that this is the reading when observing the movements, but there is no longer any evidence that the elimination of the candidates can be traced back to a plan or who orchestrated it.
Arzú García-Granados’ candidacy was invalidated by an action by the FCN-Nación party, which nominated former president Jimmy Morales as candidate for the post of deputy. During his tenure, Morales suspended the mandate of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and his party is part of the majority political alliance formed with the ruling party during the current legislature.
The Supreme Electoral Court has ruled that Arzú-García Granados is unfit to run for president because he has shown rebellion by ignoring several warnings about an early campaign. The criterion of the Constitutional Chamber is that the court has the power and pre-eminence to consider whether or not the candidate meets the criteria of competence, suitability and honesty set out in the Constitution.
The Podemos candidate was not the only one promoted before the start of the election campaign, but he was the only one to face the harshest sanctions, and although he paid the fines imposed, that did not exempt him from the proficiency test he was subjected to . the electoral judges.
The MLP couple were the first to be disfellowshipped after the electoral court invalidated one of the requirements presented by vice presidential nominee Jordán Rodas. The former human rights lawyer had all his paperwork in order, but when he was nominated as a candidate, a criminal investigation began which resulted in his losing his ability to manage public funds.
Cabrera continues to promote the MLP party’s mayoral and congressional candidates. “We are ruled by criminals, we are under a dictatorship. Not registering shows that these criminals are violating their constitution and their right to vote because we meet the requirements in the MLP,” Thelma Cabrera said at a political rally on Wednesday.
voting flow
According to a CID Gallup poll, the departure of leader Carlos Pineda could boost the rise of presidential candidate Edmond Mulet, a former UN official and lawyer accused of being involved in illegal child adoptions in the 1980s. However, Mulet faces criminal prosecution from the office of prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche, described by the United States as an anti-democratic actor. The public prosecutor’s office describes as obstruction of justice the expressions of solidarity and support made by Mulet in favor of the president of elPeriódico, Jose Rubén Zamora, who was accused of a money laundering case initiated within three days.
Amid the uncertainty, VOS party presidential candidate Manuel Villacorta took an aggressive turn in his campaign, while Netcenter — a group of Twitter accounts that post the headlines and details of court officials’ trials — announced a complaint penalty would jeopardize the continuity of the game endanger. As a result, when asked who to vote for on June 25, citizens face greater uncertainty as they don’t know if they can support their candidates.
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