“The Supreme Electoral Tribunal has been co-opted by those imposing their own benefit.”
Roman Gressier writes in El Faro English about the upcoming presidential elections in Guatemala. It does look as if the the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) has decided that anyone who seeks to challenge the entrenched elites in their corrupt rampage through the state are being denied the opportunity to stand. This is how democracy works in Guatemala. Even the conservative International Republican Institute is skeptical as to whether the election process is free and fair.
Less than a month before the Guatemalan presidential elections, it’s unclear how many contenders will be allowed to compete in the race as it devolves into a judicial brawl.
The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) set Monday, May 29 as the deadline to include names on the ballot. “After then, it will no longer be in our hands, but rather the printing companies,” asserted Chief Magistrate Irma Palencia.
On May 19, a court suspended candidate Carlos Pineda, a businessman who rode a TikTok-first strategy out of obscurity to first place in early May polling, casting himself as an unscripted by-the-bootstraps entrepreneur.
He had called for an aggressive application of the death penalty, criticized the privatization of highway tolls and electricity, and called Nayib Bukele “a good dictator” worthy of emulation — including unconstitutional reelection, “if the people ask me to.”
Pineda had displaced conservative headliner Zury Ríos in the polls to fourth and former first lady-turned-political boss Sandra Torres to second. He was then ousted within two weeks for alleged technicalities in the nomination from his party Citizen Prosperity.
He is the third presidential hopeful excluded this year, each showing different hues of anti-system rhetoric and prominent in polling. Each of the three —Pineda, Indigenous national leader Thelma Cabrera, and elite mutineer Roberto Arzú— have denounced “electoral fraud” and called on supporters to symbolically cast empty “null” ballots in the presidential race.
You can read the full piece, with links, here, List of Presidential Candidates Unclear 24 Days before Guatemalan Elections.
Categories: Corruption, Criminalisation, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Presidential Elections
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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