2023-09-01 23:15:00
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Caption,
The progressive Bernardo Arévalo gave a press conference this Friday to denounce an attempted “coup d’etat.”
Article informationAuthor, RedacciónRole, BBC News Mundo1 September 2023
updated 9 hours
The president-elect of Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo, denounced this Friday an attempted coup in his country to prevent him from assuming power.
“There is a group of corrupt politicians and officials who refuse to accept this result and have launched a plan to break the constitutional order and violate democracy,” Arévalo said at a press conference.
“We are seeing an ongoing coup in which the justice apparatus is being used to violate justice itself, flouting the freely expressed popular will,” he added.
Arévalo won the presidential elections in Guatemala on August 20 at the head of the progressive Movimiento Semilla party, which is being investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office for the alleged falsification of signatures for the formation of the political group.
On Monday, August 28, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal made official the results of the elections -60.91% of the valid votes were for the Arévalo-Karin Herrera formula-, but that same day the Seed Movement was provisionally suspended by a judicial decision .
The president-elect targeted the attorney general, Consuelo Porras, and other figures in the judicial field, in addition to the Board of Directors of Congress, which on Wednesday registered the group’s bench in the Legislature as independent, which prevents them from presiding over commissions and influence the preparation of the legislative agenda, among other powers.
“These actions constitute a coup that is promoted from the institutions that should guarantee justice in our country,” Arévalo said.
“I call for us to unite to defeat the coup forces that intend to keep us submerged in corruption, impunity and poverty, to defend (…) the vote,” he added.
Arévalo, who won the elections against Sandra Torres with the most progressive proposal in Guatemala in decades, must assume the presidency of the country on January 14, 2024.
Torres did not recognize the electoral results, unlike the current president, Alejandro Giammattei, who congratulated Arévalo and with whom he will begin working on the transfer of power next Monday.
In recent months, the electoral authorities had prohibited, for technical reasons, the participation in the elections of several pre-candidates with a profile far removed from the pro-government conservatism.
The controversy continued when the Constitutional Court (CC) ordered that the results of the first round not be made official until a new comparison of the minutes was carried out.
The head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity, Rafael Curruchiche —included, like Attorney General Porras, in the US State Department’s Engels list of “corrupt and undemocratic actors”—announced the suspension of Movimiento Semilla for an alleged use of fraudulent signatures for its formation as a party.
Arévalo then described that decision as a “technical coup.”
The CC, however, stopped the court order on the grounds that no political party can be canceled during an electoral process, which once again gave the green light to the candidate’s participation in the second round, in which Arévalo won easily. .
son of former president
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Caption,
Bernardo Arévalo and Karin Herrera, who will be vice president of Guatemala.
A 64-year-old sociologist and former diplomat, he is the son of Juan José Arévalo, the first popularly elected president of this Central American country after the 1944 Revolution.
Seed Movement first emerged as an analysis group after the 2015 protests that led to the resignation of then-president Otto Pérez Molina, marred by political corruption scandals for which he was ultimately convicted.
His progressive ideology was rejected by the economic elite and the groups that traditionally held power in the country.
Many of his opponents called him a “communist” during the campaign and assured that, if he became president, he would end up expropriating land from the richest, a policy that was not raised by Arévalo.
One of his main banners in the campaign was the fight against corruption in the State from a specific anti-corruption cabinet and a surveillance commission, autonomous from the government, created with the same objective.
Although he does not contemplate his return, he praised the work of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (Cicig), expelled from the country in 2019.
Some time ago he had said that he would request the resignation of Attorney General Porras, described as “corrupt” by the US and responsible for the investigation of dozens of journalists and anti-corruption judges who ended up opting for exile.
Arévalo expressed his wish that they could return to Guatemala, but clarified that he will not be able to interfere in this regard when dealing with legal cases.
This Saturday a protest against corruption is planned in the capital, Guatemala City, promoted by civil organizations.
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