The candidate who lost the elections a week ago in Guatemala by more than 874,000 votes, Sandra Torres, does not accept the victory of Bernardo Arévalo de León. Her party, the National Unity of Hope, filed a complaint this Friday with the Prosecutor’s Office in which she points out that there was “electoral fraud” because “the result was changed by changing the will of the people.” For this reason, she has asked the Supreme Electoral Tribunal not to make official the results in which her rival achieved 2.4 million votes, which represents more than 20 points of advantage over Torres. This is despite the fact that this week the hearings for the review of ballots by the Electoral Boards concluded without changing the data or discovering irregularities. For this reason, it is expected that next week they will become official so that Bernardo Arévalo can assume the presidency of the country on January 14, 2024.
After the intentions of the Prosecutor’s Office and a judge to suspend the legal personality of the Seed Movement, Bernardo Arévalo has also denounced before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) the existence of two plans to assassinate him. The social democrat’s security team revealed to this Washington-based body that, since July 4, it had information about the so-called ‘Plan Colosio’, concocted by state agents and private individuals to kill Bernardo Arévalo. At least three sources within state institutions would have revealed this criminal intention when the current president-elect of Guatemala was listed as a favorite in the elections.
This is not the only attack designed to end the life of the future president. The same early Monday morning, when Bernardo Arévalo was celebrating his victory in a hotel in the Guatemalan capital, four prosecutors met with him to warn him that criminal gang structures were trying to kill him, for which they warned him to take security measures. that you consider relevant. At least 50 police officers will protect Bernardo Arévalo and the elected vice president, Karin Herrera.
The IACHR granted precautionary measures this Thursday in favor of the presidential couple, after warning that the State of Guatemala did not take seriously the first plan to assassinate the president-elect, to the point of questioning its existence, considering that there would not be a “actual threat”. However, the Extortion Prosecutor’s Office is already investigating the gang assassination plan.
Meanwhile, the Guatemalan Prosecutor’s Office continues to annul the Movimiento Semilla with which Bernardo Arévalo won the elections, based on an investigation in which this party allegedly falsified the signature of 300 members to be able to establish itself, while registering 18 people who were already deceased. This week, the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity (FECI) sent Congress a copy of the official letter of Judge Seventh, Fredy Orellana, in which he ordered the suspension of this formation on July 12, despite the fact that the CC has already ruled that that was not possible until the electoral process was finished with the officialization of the results.
This “political persecution” denounced by Bernardo Arévalo has provoked a petition on the change.org platform to request 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. At the moment, more than 59,000 of the 75,000 expected signatures have already been collected, although Porras filed an amparo with the CC on Thursday in which he requests the President of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, the Minister of the Interior and the director of the Police to preserve their security and guarantee the independence of the Public Ministry. The attorney general goes further and includes numerous messages published on the X social network by journalists and activists in which they report on the aforementioned campaign and the demonstrations to demand his resignation and which, in Porras’s opinion, are intended to ” limit the exercise of criminal prosecution and, therefore, violate the autonomy and independence of the MP, through acts that lead to public disorder and violation of constitutional rights”
For this reason, it requests that “public force be used if it is absolutely necessary and in exceptional cases when the meeting or demonstration is not peaceful or if there are clear indications of an imminent threat of serious violence that cannot reasonably be addressed with more proportionate measures”. After accepting this initiative for processing, the CC will meet next Monday to decide whether to grant the attorney general a provisional protection.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people demonstrated again this Friday in front of the Guatemalan Prosecutor’s Office to demand the resignation of Porras and Curruchiche, whom they accuse of carrying out a “technical coup” against democracy by trying to outlaw the party that won the elections. . The protesters placed on the bars surrounding the building photos of judges, prosecutors and journalists who have been imprisoned or who have fled into ‘exile’ to avoid judicial persecution. ‘The people voted, the people chose’, was the most chanted motto in the protest that ended without incident.