The Supreme Court of Guatemala accepted the request of nine political parties and suspended this Sunday (2) the result of the first round of presidential elections in the country. The decision comes less than a week after the announcement that the second round would be contested by candidates Sandra Torres, who had 15.8% of the votes in the first round, and Bernardo Arévalo, who reached 11.8% of the votes. In polls of voting intentions, Arévolo appeared in eighth place among the 22 candidates who disputed the election.
According to the Justice, the suspension of the results was declared to allow the evaluation of suspected irregularities and guarantee the security of the electoral process. With the decision, new vote review hearings will be held by the Departmental and District Electoral Boards. The official result of the first round will only be announced after the conclusion of this review, which has a maximum period of 115 days.
Suspicions of fraud began to appear days after the first round, held on June 25, with the appearance of complaints that one thousand electoral minutes, which corresponds to 0.82% of the total, had been altered. The denunciation was formalized by the Valor Party, through which Zury Ríos, daughter of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-1983), was running for president. In opinion polls, Ríos appeared among the three favorites, but ended up in sixth place, with only 6.57% of the votes.
The decision to suspend the results of the elections generated international reaction. The European Union (EU) called on judicial institutions and political parties to “respect the will of citizens freely expressed in the June 25 elections”. Even before the decision of the Guatemalan court, the EU had already announced that the defeated parties sought to deteriorate the rule of law through a judicialization of the election with “political ends”. The Organization of American States (OAS) also manifested itself asking that “the Powers of the State, Legislative, Judicial and Executive, to respect the separation of Powers, the integrity of the electoral process, as well as the work and the conclusions reached in this process”.
Judiciary interference in the Guatemalan elections had already drawn international attention when the country’s Supreme Electoral Court decided to deny the presidential candidacy of indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera, arguing that her partner Jordán Rodas Andrade cannot participate in the election because he is currently facing criminal charges. In addition, the electoral authority excluded deputy Aldo Dávila, a critic of Alejandro Giammattei’s government, from the electoral process due to several accusations against him by public officials.
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