‘Don’t mess with my democracy’, reads a sign during the demonstration in which thousands of people protested this Saturday for the third consecutive day in front of the Guatemalan Prosecutor’s Office after the failed attempt to suspend the legal personality of Semilla, the party who came in second in the June 25 elections and whose candidate, Bernardo Arévalo de León, aspires to the country’s Presidency in the second round of August 20 when he will face the candidate of the National Unity of Hope, Sandra Towers.

The Public Ministry has become the epicenter of the mobilizations in defense of democracy, after the judge of the Seventh Court, Fredy Orellana, ordered the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) to suspend the legal personality of Semilla, at the request of the chief of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity (FECI), Rafael Curruchiche, who is investigating this political party for an alleged case of corruption, considering that “there are indications that possibly more than 5,000 citizens were illegally attached to this group by forging their fingerprints and signature”.

However, finally, the Constitutional Court (CC) managed to stop this court order on Thursday, after granting a provisional amparo to Semilla deputy Samuel Pérez who had filed this appeal the day before to prevent the TSE from complying with the judge’s order. Pérez denounced that what was being sought was a “coup d’état”, since, in his opinion, “what they definitely wanted was to steal the elections and try to tamper with all democracy.”

The day after raising this judicial appeal, the CC granted provisional amparo “in the sense that the resolution of July 12 issued by the seventh judge does not affect or suspend the TSE agreement, so that the second electoral round is carried out on the indicated date and with the participation of the official candidates”, referring to Semilla and UNE.

The Court specifies that its resolution does not mean that the Prosecutor’s Office cannot continue exercising its powers of criminal prosecution against Semilla, although it cannot order the suspension of its legal personality based on article 92 of the Electoral and Political Parties Law, of constitutional rank. , which establishes that “a party may not be suspended after an election has been called and until it has been held”.

After leaving the door open to continue investigating Semilla, prosecutor Curruchiche, who is included in the US Engel List of corrupt and undemocratic actors, appeared on Friday to detail his accusation against Semilla. Specifically, he revealed that this party registered 12 dead people, while falsifying the signature and fingerprint of several more who, according to him, have gone to the Public Ministry to file a complaint.

The head of the FECI is not satisfied with investigating Semilla, but has announced that he is also investigating the TSE magistrates who in 2018 allowed his registration as a political force in the Citizens’ Registry, despite the fact that they were aware that he had registered 12 people who had already died. For this reason, it considered that they could have committed a crime of breach of duty, while Semilla could have committed a crime of laundering money and other assets, after accusing him of having paid 7 quetzales (less than one euro) to more than 25,000 people for his signature to be able to establish himself as a party.

Precisely, the current director of the Citizens’ Registry, Ramiro Muñoz, who had been ordered to cancel the political party, filed constitutional actions for amparo in the Torre de Tribunales and in the CC against the document of the Seventh Court, considering that it is unconstitutional. However, the First Court of Appeals refused to grant the amparo, considering that the issue had already been resolved by the CC after having accepted the Seed appeal, therefore a new protection was no longer necessary.

Meanwhile, the Prosecutor’s Office has tried to defend its actions against Semilla by arguing that “they are not intended to interfere with the date of the second round of elections or to disqualify the participation of any candidate as sustained disinformation campaigns have been manifesting”.

This has not prevented thousands of people from surrounding the Prosecutor’s Office every day to demand the resignation of the Attorney General, Consuelo Porras, who since 2021 is also included in the US Engel List of corrupt and undemocratic actors, due to the fact that during his two periods of management “repeatedly obstructed and undermined investigations against corruption in Guatemala with the purpose of protecting his political allies and obtaining undue political favors.”

For this reason, slogans such as ‘Fuera Consuelo’, ‘Consuelo the coup leader, you are the terrorist’, ‘The coup falls’ or ‘Let him resign now’ are chanted at the demonstrations, while those attending the protests have placed posters in the fences surrounding the Public Ministry that read ‘Consuelo Porras and Rafael Curruchiche are fired’. They also request the release of the president and founder of El Periódico, José Rubén Zamora, who has been in prison for almost a year due to an investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office led by Curruchiche, as a result of which he was sentenced on June 14 to six years in prison for laundering money and other assets.

For this reason, the protesters also carried signs reading ‘Consuelo and Curruchiche enemies of the people’, while a young woman painted red tears on her face while holding up a sign with photos of the attorney general, the head of the FECI and the president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei with the slogan ‘The people cry blood from so much corruption’.

The deputy in the Seed Congress Andrea Villagrán attended the protest this Saturday, remarking that what is happening in Guatemala “transcends our party, since it is a fight to recover the country and get it out of the hole in which these corrupt are messing”. Therefore, she stressed that on August 20 the population must bet on change so that “we decide once and for all to remove the corrupt and stop deciding our future.”

Meanwhile, a young man, loudspeaker in hand, warned that “today we are on the verge of losing democracy”, for which he asked “not to take a step back against that small group of infamous people who dared to touch the most delicate and elementary aspects of our democracy, which is our vote”. Another protester assured that the same parties that “have robbed and plundered the coffers are causing this revolution in Guatemala,” for which he defended that it is “time to raise our voices and take up peaceful arms.”

A few meters from the Prosecutor’s Office, the former presidential candidate for Citizen Prosperity, Carlos Pineda, filed an appeal before the CC to request that the elections be annulled and repeated, after his party was annulled and he could not present himself, despite who had already started the electoral campaign a month earlier.

Thus, he demanded that “legal equality” be applied on the basis that, if the Seed Movement was granted protection so as not to be suspended by applying article 92 of the Electoral and Political Parties Law, they do the same with his party allowing him to appear at the elections, given that “no political force can be canceled in the middle of an election”.

The circumstance arises that before being annulled by the TSE, Carlos Pineda was leading the polls for the first round of the elections, although after being prohibited from continuing in the fight for the Presidency of Guatemala, he asked for the invalid vote, which was the majority option. in the elections, after counting a total of 964,775, compared to 888,924 for Sandra Torres and 653,486 for Bernardo Arévalo de León.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project