• Elections Sandra Torres wins the elections in Guatemala, with the surprise irruption of the social democrat Bernardo Arévalo de León
  • Guatemala The old ultraconservative policy disputes the Presidency of Guatemala before the hopelessness of the population

Guatemala is mired in uncertainty, after the Constitutional Court (CC) has ordered this Saturday the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) to suspend the officialization of the results of the elections of June 25 due to the suspicion of "fraud" denounced by nine political parties. Among them, the National Unity of Hope, whose candidate for the Presidency of the country, Sandra Torres, was the most voted, after agglutinating 15.8% of the votes. In principle, the second round of elections is scheduled for August 20 in which Torres will compete for the Presidency of Guatemala with the candidate of the Seed Movement, Bernardo Arévalo de León, who received 11.7% of the votes and who has already denounced that the resolution of the CC has been issued "outside the legal framework."

Specifically, the CC stressed that the TSE must suspend the qualification of the results, so that, by August 20, "everything has been duly purged", once the Departmental Electoral Boards and the Central District convene a new hearing to review the counts, as they have requested in an amparo promoted by the general secretaries of nine political formations. among which is also the ruling party Vamos. In it, the representatives of the parties "may assert the objections and challenges they deem pertinent, especially those that generate the doubts they have raised."

Thus, the CC has granted provisional protection to the political organizations that have denounced that in the elections of June 25 there has been an "evident intention to provoke fraud" in the face of the "discrepancies between the certifications of minutes of the Voting Receiving Boards and the data published by the TSE. In this sense, twelve parties, among which are the nine that have raised the amparo, have censured in a joint statement that a "large number of records present inconsistencies, alterations and other discrepancies," which is a "serious situation that puts at risk the electoral process and democracy itself."

Therefore, they asked that "the last instances be reached to determine who are the material and intellectual authors" of what they already call a "fraud." Among the nine denouncing parties, there are the two candidates that the polls predicted would compete for second place in the elections: Zury Ríos, of the Unionist Value coalition and Edmond Mulet, of the CABAL party.

It so happens that the TSE had not yet completed the count of the 5.5 million votes cast, given that 0.88 percent of the votes remain to be counted in an election in which the number of null votes (966,389) was even higher than that obtained by the winning candidate, Sandra Torres (881,592). which represented 17.3%, while the blank vote reached 6.9% (388,442) and abstention stood at 39.5%, due to widespread discontent among the population for the lack of response to their needs.

Under the argument of "guaranteeing the purity of the electoral process", the CC has granted protection to the nine formations that do not agree with the results. Therefore, it orders that, once the counts have been reviewed, the competent electoral bodies "carry out a comparison between the records that were part of the electoral process in order to determine if each of them complied with the legal requirements."

In this way, the CC indicates that, if it is established "reasonably that the result of the vote could have been altered, the Departmental Electoral Board and / or the Central District proceed to introduce the pertinent modifications or, where appropriate, analyze if the assumptions of annulment provided for by law concur", without prejudice to the fact that "a new vote count" can be carried out.

After stressing that this pronouncement must be "strictly complied with within the aforementioned deadlines", the CC ordered that a certified copy of the writ of amparo be sent to the Supreme Court of Justice so that it can be constituted as a Court of Amparo and "continue with the processing" of the amparo filed by the aforementioned political formations.

Resolution without "legal support"

The candidate who, surprisingly, came second in the elections and who will dispute the Presidency with Sandra Torres, Bernardo Arévalo de León, went on Saturday night to the doors of the CC to accuse this judicial body of "bogging down the electoral process" with a resolution that "threatens" to postpone "indefinitely" the second round.

While dozens of supporters shouted 'it looks, it feels, Bernardo president', Arévalo de León has criticized that the CC "had no competence" to know the amparo of the nine political parties, but that "it should have been sent to the Supreme Court of Justice". On the other hand, he has asked the TSE to request the revocation of this resolution for "inadmissible" and for its "evident lack of legal framework", while announcing that he is studying all the "legal possibilities" to avoid that through "tricks the will of the people of Guatemala is defrauded".

"We are going to defend the results of the polls obtained last Sunday," he stressed, while reproving that the order to suspend the officialization of the results is "very dangerous for a democracy that is being increasingly corroded by the perverse uses of legal tricks" that, in his opinion, seek to "mock the popular will issued on June 25."

Arévalo de León, who is the son of the former president of Guatemala, Juan José Arévalo (1945-1951), recalled that, in the elections, the people of Guatemala "spoke loud and clear about who they want the candidates who are in the second round to be." In this way, he has considered that the fact that he was in second place "has baffled those who believed that they had all the processes rigged and tied with any type of ruse to guarantee an expected result."

"Seeing that they can no longer rig the result of the first round, they have resorted to an action that has no basis in the law and that violates the regulations established in the Electoral Law and the Constitution, so they are acting outside the legal framework with the consent of the instances of justice and, in this case with the CC," he said.

For Arévalo de León, the "corrupt" are "desperate because they know that the people of Guatemala have spoken and their days are numbered," although he has warned that "they can resort to any type of trick," so the population that "expressed its fed up with this corrupt political system must be attentive."

In similar terms, the deputy of the Seed Movement in Congress Samuel Pérez, who has defended that it is no longer an electoral competition between his party and the UNE, but "between the people and those who want to impose a dictatorship in Guatemala" directly accusing the magistrates of the CC. For this reason, he has asserted that "we cannot allow it", because, as he has warned, "this may be the last time we have an electoral process in which we can decide several alternatives on the ballot".

"Inconsistencies" in the electoral records

For her part, the winning candidate of the first round, Sandra Torres, has clarified that she does not ask that the second round be suspended or that the elections be repeated: "nor that we were crazy", taking into account that "we are leading the results with more than 200,000 votes" of difference with Bernardo Arévalo de León. However, he explained that his party decided to file an amparo before the CC to have "doubts" about the "inconsistencies" of 2,300 electoral records containing "500 votes each."

Torres, who for the third consecutive time aspires to be president of Guatemala, denounces that the records that the TSE has are "altered" and "the only thing we want to know is the truth and give legitimacy to the process, so that all we want is that the minutes are compared with the results and, if the numbers are correct, Nothing happens." In this line, he does not believe that the CC "is going to break the constitutional order", so he asked that "they stop suffering because they are asking for what the law allows".

Following the resolution of the CC, the Electoral Observation Mission of the European Union in Guatemala (EU EOM) has asked the judicial institutions and political parties to "respect the clear will of the citizens freely expressed in the elections", as well as the "separation of powers and the rule of law as the only way for the disagreements that may arise about the electoral process to be resolved in accordance with the law".

In addition, he recalled that two days after the June 25 elections, he said in his preliminary statement that "citizens demonstrated their firm commitment to democracy by going to express their will on an election day well organized by the TSE," while warning about "the deterioration of the rule of law and the judicialization for political purposes of purely electoral matters."

In similar terms, the Organization of American States (OAS) urged the legislative, judicial and executive branches to "respect the separation of powers and the integrity of the electoral process," since "the importance of maintaining respect for the expression of the people by the vote is essential to maintain the fullest confidence in the elections on the part of citizens and the international community."

On the other hand, a week after the elections, the winner of the Mayor's Office of Guatemala City is still unknown, given that, in the absence of 1,066 ballots being counted, the current mayor, Ricardo Quiñónez, of the Valor Unionista coalition, only leads with 522 votes to the candidate of CREO, Roberto González, who has also denounced fraud by his main rival. for which his party has already gone to the Prosecutor's Office of Electoral Affairs before what it considers an irregular count of the votes. Although Quiñónez declared himself the winner of the elections on June 26, the truth is that there is still no winner, something that will be delayed even more after the decision of the CC to suspend the officialization of the results.

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