As night fell over Guatemala City on Wednesday, July 12, dozens of demonstrators had gathered in front of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). The institution had stalled for over two hours a press conference to announce the certification of the national election results tallied on June 25. After 5 p.m., the Public Prosecutor’s Office (Ministerio Público, or MP) interrupted the affair with an announcement on social media that they had secured a court order to suspend the legal incorporation of Semilla, the party of presidential candidate Bernardo Arévalo, under accusations of falsifying signatures in the creation of the party in 2017 and even of alleged money laundering. The move seeks to annul Arévalo's candidacy in the August 20 run-off against Sandra Torres of the National Unity of Hope (UNE) party.
But at 6:30, the TSE began its conference and certified the results, convening Semilla to the run-off. Irma Palencia, president of the Tribunal, said that the court had not notified them of any action against the party. The Central American country is now locked in conflicting legal arguments between a broad spectrum of legal analysts who assert that the order violates electoral law prohibiting the suspension of a party with elections in full swing, while those close to the prosecutors counter that, in the case of an alleged crime, a judge does have the power.
These actions have deepened the uncertainties surrounding an election that has become a magnet for international condemnations of procedural irregularities facilitated by courts’ heavy hand. Among them are the exclusion of popular candidates, reports of bribery by President Alejandro Giammattei to the TSE, and unfounded allegations of “fraud” in first-round voting.
Hours later, at 11 p.m., Arévalo and running mate Karin Herrera denounced in a press conference a plan by the MP to raid the Semilla headquarters at 6 a.m. At midnight the party petitioned the Constitutional Court for relief from the court order. Semilla legislator Samuel Pérez told ConCriterio this morning that the MP has repeatedly denied the party information on the charges against them.
By eight in the morning on Thursday, the MP had yet to raid the party headquarters, but had entered the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. The night before, Rafael Curruchiche —head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity (FECI), sanctioned by the U.S. State Department for obstructing corruption investigations— declared that the FECI had already obtained information from the TSE to accuse Semilla of enrolling “twelve deceased persons” as signatories to its foundation in 2017. Curruchiche announced that the FECI presented to the Seventh Criminal Tribunal “evidence that potentially more than five thousand citizens were enrolled illegally” to the party.
FECI prosecutor Cynthia Monterroso, who was also charged with the raid on the home of journalist José Rubén Zamora, disregarded the TSE’s insistence that no weapons be brought into the building upon entering the TSE facilities escorted by armed agents of the Special Division of Criminal Investigation of the National Civil Police.
“I’m so surprised and concerned for the bosses, the directors, and the workers because of this invasion of the institution. I don’t know what to think anymore, nor what might follow,” reacted TSE President Palencia in a phone call with radio station Emisoras Unidas. “I don’t know if this is a threat, because a threat is made before acting; I don’t know how to take this.”
The MP also accuses the party of seeking to launder money through the signature collection process of party registration. According to a legal document disseminated by Semilla, the party's founders paid seven quetzales ($0.90 USD) per signature as a stipend, a party practice allowed by law. Curruchiche multiplied that stipend by the total number of signatures required to found a party, 25,000, in order to accuse Semilla of hiding the origin of Q175,000 ($22,330): “The source of the financing is unknown, which would give way to the possible commission of the crime of laundering money and other assets.”
It’s on the basis of this petition from Curruchiche that a judge ordered the suspension of Semilla, a party founded in 2017. Arévalo’s surprise ascent to sixth place in the June 25 vote awakened a smear campaign from the ruling political class by displacing Congressman Manuel Conde, the candidate of Giammattei’s Vamos party, to third place and ultraconservative Zury Ríos, whose campaign was born from an alliance of parties tied to economic and military elites, to sixth.
There is currently a fear among sectors critical of the legal action against Semilla that, if Arévalo is excluded from the run-off, the authorities will impose Conde in second place, green-lighting him for the run-off, despite a gap in legal precedent. “Figures in the Executive Branch are finding themselves with less and less power. Soon enough, the magistrates of the courts will stop answering their phone calls and, when the administration changes, the risk is that they could start to criminally prosecute them. [The objective] is to maintain power in the Executive,” economist Enrique Godoy told El Faro.
Godoy attributes the MP’s efforts to disqualify Semilla to a coordination with Giammattei, who Curruchiche helped shield from an investigation into an accusation of 2019 campaign bribery.
Following the prosecutors’ announcement, the crowd continued to grow in front of the TSE to demand respect for the voting results amid a latent possibility of protests that could be attended by Indigenous authorities. “This isn’t about us or Semilla, it’s about the country. The powerful no longer want the people to freely decide their future, but we will defeat them,” tweeted Arévalo. “The seed of change and hope will not be stomped out.”
The MP’s arguments met immediate resistance from attorneys and election monitors who cited Article 92D of the Electoral Law of Political Parties: “A political party cannot be suspended after an election is convened and until it has concluded.” But that did not stop Fredy Orellana —the same judge who ordered publisher José Rubén Zamora to trial and has been identified in the press as close to the far-right Foundation Against Terrorism (FCT)— of ordering the “provisional suspension” within 24 hours of “the legal incorporation of the sponsoring group of the political party Semilla.” This would affect not only Arévalo, but also the party’s 23 elected members of Congress and one mayor in the department of Quetzaltenango, among other positions.
Ricardo Méndez Ruiz, president of the FCT and close to Curruchiche’s office, tweeted that “on grounds not contemplated in that article [92], like the commission of a crime or fraud of law, of course you an suspend [the incorporation of a party]. The reason is that those fraudulent acts are null and void ipso uire — that is, they were never born of legality.”
CACIF, the conservative business lobby which had until this point staked out equidistant stances regarding the precarity of the election, doesn’t share his reading: “Respect for the decision of the highest election authority and Guatemalans’ will, as expressed at the polls, is imperative.” Mirador Electoral, a coalition of monitoring organizations including Transparency International and news outlet Prensa Comunitaria, denounced the “an attempted electoral coup.”
The UNE, set to compete with Semilla in the run-off and one of the parties to sign onto legal challenges against the vote certification, published a statement at 1 a.m. on Thursday sidestepping a frontal condemnation of the MP: “We express our concern for the judicial actions presented in recent hours, in which the political party that came in second place was presumably involved.” But in the afternoon on Thursday Torres announced “the suspension of our electoral campaign in solidarity with the citizens who cast their vote” for Semilla.
Some analysts believe that the action against Semilla could prosper. “If the TSE had issued its resolution prior to the MP’s announcement, things would have been different, but [the TSE magistrates] did things this way in order to wash their hands. So there is no conflict. [The Tribunal] has been a puppet for fraud since the beginning,” economist Enrique Godoy told El Faro. “Now the courts can demand that the TSE’s resolution be annulled because the court made the announcement first.”
The OAS Election Observation Mission declared on Wednesday that “the inappropriate tone used by the judge when addressing the TSE ignores that it is the highest electoral authority and that it enjoys autonomy and independence to fulfill its constitutional functions.” The E.U. mission added in the early hours of the following morning that the judicial order “threatens one of the basic pillars of democracy: respect for popular will expressed at the polls. [We] call for an end to the judicialization of the elections via maneuvers of a dubious legal character.”
“There is a deep desperation among political actors and those who control the justice sector. They want to manipulate the country’s electoral process. There is a notable rift among actors and today we are finally seeing it,” says political scientist Virgilio Álvarez.
Possible break in the constitutional order
Doubts about whether Guatemala’s electoral system would be threatened gained ground almost two weeks ago, following a controversial ruling by the country’s highest court. The Constitutional Court suspended the results on July 1 and ordered the TSE to review the vote tally sheets, or actas, gathered from polling tables around the country. But the Tribunal reported no significant changes in the results and the Supreme Court of Justice, the forum for appeals, denied a request by political parties on July 10 to order a recount of individual votes — a measure not contemplated in the country’s electoral law.
“The TSE magistrates have much to lose, which has to do with the señores from the North [the United States],” says Álvarez. “None of them have lost their visas, nor are they included in the lists [of sanctions], so they decided to play their hand.”
The U.S. State Department has publicly and repeatedly called for respect for the initial vote count alongside the secretaries-general of the U.N. and OAS, the European Union, and a dozen other diplomatic missions. The U.S. Embassy and Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs did not immediately respond to written questions about whether the country sought to influence, aside from its public statements, the decision of the TSE.
“We welcome @TSEGuatemala certification of 1st round election results upholding the will of the people & look forward to the Aug 20 vote on the announced top two presidential candidates,” tweeted Assistant Secretary Brian Nichols, “but we are deeply concerned by new @MPguatemala threats to Guatemala’s electoral democracy. Institutions must respect the will of voters.”
It was only after exhausting options for a recount that the MP brought the effort to block Arévalo’s candidacy to a criminal court. The daily Prensa Libre reported on Wednesday that “in recent weeks” prosecutors had begun to ask the TSE for “details of the creation, assemblies, and financial aspects of Semilla”, echoing the promise the day after the elections of Jorge Baldizón —leader of one of the parties who asked the CSJ for a recount and who campaigned unsuccessfully for a seat in Congress— to comb through Semilla’s party registration records in search of “any shortcoming” allowing legal action to eliminate the party from the contest.
Carmen Aída Ibarra, activist from the Pro Justice Movement, says that the suspension or cancellation of a party would be a last step, preceded by a request to remove their immunity and prosecution of individuals. If those cases end in convictions, then the annulation of the party could be requested.
“This is the moment to demand that the Supreme Court of Justice and Constitutional Court pump the breaks on these anti-democratic attacks —because this will surely reach their benches— and return the democratic process to the constitutional order,” she said.
“Many things could happen, from a military insurrection in the style of the old days [when civilian authorities failed to reach a consensus] to an assassination attempt, because the corrupt are very desperate, despite controlling the justice sector and Congress,” warns Álvarez.
Guatemala suffered its last break in the constitutional order in 1993, when then-president Jorge Serrano Elías dissolved Congress, the CC, and CSJ not a decade after the passage of the 1985 Constitution that put an end to military control of civilian power. A week later, Serrano requested help from the military and fled to Panama, where he lives today with an active arrest warrant.
The current Supreme Court Magistrates —implicated in multiple cases of congressional influence-trafficking in high court appointments— are dogged by their own shadow of illegitimacy: In 2019, when they refused to step down from the bench as their legally-established term ended, civil society groups were already denouncing a “break in the constitutional order.”
“The president and Curruchiche wouldn’t have gotten involved in this if they hadn’t believed that they had the support of the CC and CSJ. So they have little to lose and much to gain,” asserts Godoy. “Their bet is that we are a people who won’t take to the streets to protest.”
