Candidates have been disqualified on spurious grounds as experts warn of country backsliding into autocracy
Nina Lakhani and Jody García write in The Guardian about the manipulation and corruption being carried out prior to this weekend’s presidential elections in Guatemala. Any candidate who may seek to challenge the status quo has been denied registration so leaving the field for those candidates who wish to maintain the corruption and violence inherent in the current state and its beneficiaries.
Along the main thoroughfares that crisscross Guatemala City, campaign posters promoting almost two dozen presidential candidates are plastered on electricity poles and lamp-posts, each promising to bring prosperity and security to Central America’s most populous country.
Yet despite the plurality on display, few Guatemalans expect much to change amid mounting evidence that this Sunday’s election could be little more than a simulation of democracy.
Candidates from across the political spectrum have been blocked on spurious procedural technicalities, including the former frontrunner Carlos Pineda – a conservative agribusinessman and TikTok star – and Thelma Cabrera, an Indigenous Maya Mam grassroots leader.
Both have been encouraging supporters to spoil their ballot on 25 June in hopes of forcing a rerun. But less than 30 years since the end of the brutal civil war which left 200,000 mostly Indigenous civilians dead and disappeared – and four years since a pioneering UN-backed anti-corruption body was forced to leave Guatemala – fears are mounting that the country is backsliding into autocracy.
You can read the full piece, with links and photos here, ‘Simulation of democracy’: Guatemala readies for election amid concerns of manipulation.
Categories: Corruption, Criminalisation, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Justice, Presidential Elections, Violence
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
Post comments here