The elected president of Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo de León, has denounced a “coup d’état promoted by the institutions that should guarantee justice”, headed by “the attorney general, Consuelo Porras, the head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity, Rafael Curruchiche, the seventh judge, Fredy Orellana, the Board of Directors of Congress and other corrupt and undemocratic actors” whom he accuses of having launched a plan to “break the constitutional order and violate democracy and the will of the people.”
Since coming in second place in the first round of the elections held on June 25, Judge Orellana ordered the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) on July 12 to suspend the legal personality of the Semilla Movement, as Curruchiche had requested in the framework of an investigation, according to which this formation had supposedly falsified the signature of more than 300 members and even 18 people already deceased to establish itself in 2017. However, the Constitutional Court prevented this measure, after granting provisional protection to Semilla, allowing Bernardo Arévalo to run for the second round, held on August 20 in which he swept after receiving 2.4 million votes, 20 points more than his rival, Sandra Torres.
This did not prevent the machinery from being activated again to outlaw his party, so that on the same day that the results of the second round were made official, August 28, the director of the TSE Citizen Registry decided to provisionally suspend the legal personality of the Semilla Movement, leaving the elected president without a political party a few months before he assumes power on January 14, 2024.
The last straw for Arévalo was the decision of the Board of Directors of Congress to disown this Wednesday the seven deputies of the Semilla bench whom it declared independent and among whom it is found. This decision also affects the 23 deputies of this political force who will take office on January 14, 2024 and who will also not be able to form any group in the Chamber made up of 160 legislators.
The Semilla Movement is doing everything possible to reverse what Arévalo de León calls “political persecution.” Thus, it has filed an appeal for annulment before the TSE against the director of the Citizen Registry, considering that the suspension is “null and void.” At the same time, he has filed an amparo before the Constitutional Court (CC) against the Board of Directors of Congress for “not having given a hearing, nor having consulted the Plenary Session” about the lack of knowledge of this political formation.
Against this backdrop, the president-elect appeared at a press conference yesterday, along with the vice president-elect, Karin Herrera, to denounce that, despite the fact that the electoral results have been made official and recognized internationally, “there is a group of politicians and corrupt officials who refuse to accept them.
“We are seeing a Coup d’état in progress in which the justice apparatus is used to violate justice itself, mocking the popular will freely expressed at the polls on August 20,” he censured, while lamenting that “it is being carried out carried out step by step through spurious, illegitimate and illegal actions in different instances, whose objective is to prevent the inauguration of the elected authorities including the president, the vice president and our deputies to Congress.
For this reason, as president-elect he called “to the people of Guatemala, civil society, businessmen, workers, popular movements, churches, indigenous authorities, legitimate political forces, students, youth and all Guatemalans who reject corruption and authoritarianism to join forces in defense of democracy and unrestricted respect for the popular will.
In this sense, he called on the population to “unite to defeat the coup forces that intend to keep us submerged in corruption, impunity and poverty.” For Bernardo Arévalo, now is the time to “defend the most effective weapon of free people, which is the vote and our opportunity as a nation for a new spring in the face of the voracity of the corrupt.”
For this reason, he appealed to the “union of the entire nation in defense of our democracy”, taking into account that there are still four months left before the inauguration, during which he warned that “these political mafias will try to consummate the Coup d’état”. . In this way, he recalled that the people’s resistance to the defense of the guarantees set forth in our Constitution, such as the right to peaceful demonstration, is “legitimate,” so “we call on all people and organizations committed to democracy to join us in the legal and political actions necessary to defend the people’s decision.
The first major test of citizen support for Bernardo Arévalo will take place this Saturday starting at 2:00 p.m., when various organizations have called for a demonstration in the Plaza de la Constitución in the country’s capital, under the slogan ‘Guatemala needs you’ and in which will demand the resignation of the attorney general, Consuelo Porras, and the head of the FECI, Rafael Curruchiche, both included in the US Engel List of corrupt and undemocratic actors. Next Monday, a ‘Sit-In for the Defense of Democracy’ will also be held starting at 8:00 a.m. in front of all the offices of the Public Ministry in the country.
It so happens that a group of citizens delivered this Friday at the headquarters of the Guatemalan Prosecutor’s Office more than 100,000 signatures to demand the resignation of both officials who, together with Judge Orellana, have conspired to remove the Movement from the electoral contest. Seed and prevent Bernardo Arévalo from aspiring to the Presidency of the Central American country, emulating his father, Juan José Arévalo, who was president of Guatemala between 1945 and 1951.
The denunciation of this plot by the president-elect occurred on the same day that the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) unanimously approved a declaration on the situation in Guatemala, which considers that “the use of the legal system as a tool to intimidate and unduly suspend civil and political rights, nor to improperly change electoral results”, in a clear reference to the legal suspension of Semilla.
During the Permanent Council, the Secretary General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, announced that next Monday he will go to Guatemala to participate in the first meeting between the president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, and the elected president, Bernardo Arévalo, to launch the process of transfer of powers. Almagro has defended that it is “essential that January 14 be reached in peace and without suffering further judicialization”, taking into account that the suspension of the Semilla Movement “eliminates the legal security on which the rule of law and political security are based of the democratic system”.
Meanwhile, the losing candidate of the elections, Sandra Torres, continues not to accept the results two weeks after the elections were held, considering that there was “fraud.” For this reason, her party, the National Unity of Hope, filed a constitutional protection in the Supreme Court of Justice this Friday against the certification of the results. He considers that, after the Semilla Movement has been suspended and has been left without a legislative block in Congress, this party is unable to exercise its rights and, therefore, maintains that they should not assume their positions.
For his part, Bernardo Arévalo condemns that the TSE magistrates and the officials of the Citizen Registry are being “coerced, intimidated and threatened in a shameful manner” to take measures against Semilla and, therefore, he insisted that while his party tries stop all this “persecution”, the people must assume the right “to protest, demonstration and free expression as a citizen’s duty to defend the Constitution, if we really want this country to return to being a democratic country and free”.
However, he insists that this “need for mobilization and the right to resistance against the corrupt and to defend democracy must always be exercised peacefully and refuse to fall into the traps that are already being set to provoke violence,” with the purpose of “generating the conditions for the interruption of constitutional guarantees.”
