The electoral authority made the results official, after two weeks of appeals and legal claims that lengthened the process, which confirmed the ballot between the right-wing candidate and former first lady Sandra Torres before Bernardo Arévalo, a left-wing candidate and doctor in Sociology.
But minutes before the court announced its decision, the Guatemalan Special Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity reported through a video on Twitter that, at its request, a judge had suspended the legal personality of the Seed Movement, which drives Arévalo. for the second round. He accused him of having established himself as a party by presumably presenting false signatures.
This announcement added another unforeseen event to the most accidental elections of the modern era in the Central American country, as the president of the electoral tribunal, Irma Palencia, described them the day before, and which questioned the resistance of the country’s democracy.
At the conference, Palencia said that what was resolved by the judge had not been notified to the court because they were in a plenary meeting and that they did not know the scope of the judge’s resolution.
“It is something that worries us as a court, because we know that elections are won at the polls, derived from the sacred suffrage of the citizens and for that we have been working for a long time,” said Palencia.
Demonstrators gathered outside the TSE building with allusions to electoral corruption.
With its decision to proclaim results, the electoral authority announced that both candidates can officially restart their campaign with a view to the second round, from which the successor to President Alejandro Giammattei will emerge.
In plenary session, the magistrates said that the elections “have met the requirements that they should have and that there are no pending appeals” and, therefore, they proceeded to “declare the validity of the presidential election of president and vice president of the Republic,” according to the reading of the agreement made by the secretary of the court, Mario Alexander Velázquez Pérez.
The president of the electoral court, Irma Palencia, defended the decision “so that all citizens can return to the polls to cast their votes.”
Of the 5.5 million votes cast, they also reported that there were 4.2 million valid ones.
No authority explicitly explained whether the complaint by the Prosecutor’s Office and the judicial order to suspend Semilla will imply that this movement will be prevented from going to the second round, although the Guatemalan electoral law states in its article 91 that “a party may not be suspended after the call for an election and until it has been held.
“The electoral process has a protection framework around it; this framework is supported by a law of constitutional rank”, Palencia pointed out and added that, after the announcement, they will resume their meeting to hear the judge’s decision.
What the Prosecutor’s complaint says is that “there are indications that possibly more than 5,000 citizens were illegally adhered to the seed movement by forging their handwriting and signature.” Semilla needed 25,000 signatures to establish itself as a political party. But the complaint does not indicate how many signatures ended up being presented to the electoral authority and if there were more than those 25,000.
Prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche, head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity, explained in the video released that a citizen denounced in May 2022 having been illegally adhered to the movement and that, consequently, graphological tests were carried out. The conclusion came out that the handwritten spelling on the accession sheets presented by Semilla “does not present graphonomic correspondence with that provided voluntarily by Mr. Rodrigo Rodas Sanchez.”
The prosecutor added that the same signature and fingerprint of a single person was used for several citizens and that there are even 12 deceased people registered, as well as “signatures without names and altered sheets.”
Curruchiche was sanctioned in 2021 by the United States government, which accused him of obstructing the fight against corruption and undermining Guatemala’s democracy. He is the standard-bearer for the Guatemalan attorney general, Consuelo Porras, also sanctioned by that country.
The Special Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity presented the complaint as “a new case of corruption and impunity” called “Seed corruption.”
The left-wing movement, founded and led by Bernardo Arévalo, gave surprise at the polls in an election with 19 right-leaning presidential binomials out of a total of 22 participants in the electoral race.
Semilla registered his candidacy within the period established in the Citizens’ Registry without any impediment vetoing him from participating with the presidential binomial on June 25. The prosecutor assured, however, that the situation of the irregular signatures was duly reported to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal last May.
As a defense argument, according to the prosecutor in the message broadcast on networks, the general secretary of the Seed Movement, Bernardo Arévalo, denounced at the time the team that he hired to obtain the adhesion signatures and to which he paid at the rate of seven quetzales ( slightly less than a dollar) per signature collected.
According to Curruchiche’s accounts, the collection of 25,000 signatures cost Semilla the amount of 175,000 quetzales (about $22,500) and “not knowing its source of financing”, it could lead “to the possible commission of the crime of money or asset laundering ”.
FOUNTAIN: Associated Press
