Inscription for the June national vote closed this weekend. Electoral authorities, toeing the line of far-right political operatives, have spuriously excluded two presidential duos and are aiming for a third, clearing the way for conservative Zury Rios.
Roman Gressier and Julie López write in El Faro English on the latest example of using the judicial process to deny democracy in the lead up to this year’s presidential elections in Guatemala.
It’s a play in three acts: Far-right Twitter trolls bombard a public figure who has denounced corruption. A ringleader of the accounts, online or in person, promises to release the “Kraken,” or send them to “jail or exile,” sometimes leaking information on legal filings. Guatemalan authorities then move on the individual.
This sequence, at first glance absurd, has helped push dozens of prosecutors, judges, opposition members, and journalists to flee the country since 2021. It is also stacking the deck for the June 25 elections —when Guatemalans will pick the president, Congress, mayors, and more— by excluding prominent candidates, as already happened in 2019.
On Saturday, when inscriptions closed, Indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera and Jordán Rodas, the presidential ticket for the People’s Liberation Movement (MLP), were excluded.
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Leading the polls is former congresswoman Zury Ríos, who has also received electoral arbiters’ favor. Her military-backed party has brokered an alliance with economic elites and authorities have allowed her, the daughter and protegée of military dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, to enroll despite a constitutional ban on the office for the offspring of coup presidents — like Ríos Montt in 1982.
The prohibition dashed her bids in 2015 and 2019, but —without any constitutional reform— it is not being applied this time. There has been no official explanation.
You can read the full piece, with links, photos, and an audio link, here, Exclusion of Presidential Candidates Stains June Guatemalan Elections.
Categories: Audio, Corruption, Criminalisation, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Land, Legal, Presidential Elections, Violence
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