On Monday the Supreme Electoral Tribunal both certified the victory of President-Elect Bernardo Arévalo and temporarily suspended his Semilla party, the latest in a chain of protracted legal battles leading up to inauguration on January 14. The party says it will follow every route of appeal including, if necessary, to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
Roman Gressier writes in El Faro English on the continuing machinations around the legality of the results of the election runoff and the president elect’s party, Movimiento Semilla.
Guatemala, translated from Nahuatl, means roughly “the land of many trees.” Just three hours before Bernardo Arévalo was officially declared president-elect by the Electoral Supreme Tribunal (TSE) on Monday evening, a top official from the same electoral authority approved the suspension of his party. With 137 days left until the January 14 transfer of power, he is clearly far from out of the woods.
The official, Citizen Registrar Ramiro Muñoz, argued that immunity from suspension during election season should not apply because “the second-round election has already been held.” The ruling defied a Supreme Court injunction in favor of Semilla to shield the party through October 31, when —as TSE President Irma Palencia publicly underscored yesterday— election season officially ends.
The Monday order was also a stark reversal of course for the registrar, who refused six weeks ago to carry out the illegal order. Muñoz spent three weeks on leave as threats of prosecution against him arose and even reached his deputy registrar, and as prosecutors and armed police raided the Tribunal.
His eventual approval of the suspension has been expected since early July, and the ensuing legal fight is likely to sprawl out over the next half-year.
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The Public Prosecutor’s Office is fighting multiple open fronts, all of them internationally criticized as illegal. The attack on Semilla’s legal standing coincided on Monday with a raid on the house of the parents of exiled former anti-impunity prosecutor Juan Francisco Sandoval and the arrest of Claudia González, Sandoval’s lawyer and also the current defense attorney of political prisoner Virginia Laparra.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Brian Nichols condemned these moves as a “blatant weaponization of the justice system.” OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro similarly denounced the raids in the morning and the suspension of Semilla in the evening. As more statements likely trickle in over the next few hours, the question is whether any international pressure can tilt the scales in the case of Semilla like it did in obtaining promises of a fair runoff.
You can read the full article, with links and photos, here, Guatemala Electoral Tribunal Certifies Arévalo Victory but Suspends His Party.
Categories: Corruption, Criminalisation, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Justice, Presidential Elections, Solidarity in Action, Violence
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