Guatemala’s Superior Electoral Tribunal announced in a statement on Sunday, July 2, that it would comply with the decision taken the day before by the Constitutional Court by suspending “the qualification and formalization of the results” of the first round of the election. June 25 presidential election.
The Constitutional Court had been seized on Friday by nine right-wing parties, including that of outgoing President Alejandro Giammattei, Vamos. This formation cited a “risk and imminent threat” of having posts distributed before the alleged “vices” of the ballot were brought to the attention of the electoral commissions, according to the Court.
The highest court in the country has thus requested the convening of “a new hearing to review the votes”. In addition to the first round of the presidential election (the second round of which is scheduled for August 20), legislative and municipal elections were held on the same day.
Disputes the day after the vote
To everyone’s surprise, two Social Democrats found themselves at the top of the twenty-two presidential candidates in the first round, marked by high abstention and a large number of invalid ballots.
Favorite in the polls and unsuccessful candidate several times before, Sandra Torres, ex-wife of former left-wing president Alvaro Colom (2008-2012), obtained 15.86% of the vote. Deputy Bernardo Arevalo, son of the country’s first democratically elected president, Juan José Arevalo (1945-1951), surprised everyone with 11.77%. He was placed in eighth position with 2.9% of voting intentions in the latest poll by the Prodatos Institute.
These results marked a break after three successive right-wing presidencies: Otto Perez (2012-2015), Jimmy Morales (2016-2020) and incumbent President Alejandro Giammattei.
The disputes and the denunciation of alleged fraud in the elections had begun the day after the first round. “The elections must be redone,” the lawyer for the Valor (courage) party demanded on Friday, training Zury Rios, daughter of ex-dictator Efrain Rios Montt (1982-1983) and sixth in the first round. This party denounced a “fraud” with the supposed modification of a thousand minutes or 0.82% of the total.
“Threat to Democracy”
On Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the questioning of the elections in Guatemala poses “a serious threat to democracy with far-reaching implications”. “Measures intended to interfere in the outcome of the elections violate the spirit of Guatemala’s constitution and threaten the legitimacy of the democratic process,” he argued.
The European Union (EU) Election Observation Mission, in a statement, called on “judicial institutions and political parties to respect the clear will of citizens freely expressed in the June 25 elections.” On June 27, two days after the vote, the EU warned against “the deterioration of the rule of law and the judicialization of electoral events for purely political purposes”, stressing “the strong commitment of citizens to the democracy and civic values”.
For its part, the Organization of American States (OAS) called “the powers of the State, legislative, judicial and executive, to respect the separation of powers, the integrity of the electoral process, as well as the work and conclusions carried out in this process”. “Respecting the expression of the people through the vote is essential to maintaining the full confidence of citizens and the international community in the ballot,” the regional organization added in a statement.
Guatemala is one of the most unequal countries in Latin America, judges the World Bank, with 10.3 million of its 17.6 million inhabitants living below the poverty line and one in two children suffering from chronic undernutrition according to the United Nations.
