This Tuesday, the electoral authorities and prosecutors of political parties began the review of the results of the presidential elections of June 25 ordered by justice, a measure that has sparked controversy.
The request by Guatemalan right-wing leaders to review the results of the presidential elections that took place on June 25, has sparked criticism both nationally and internationally. Said review was ordered by the Constitutional Court, the country’s highest judicial instance, and will continue all week. To date it is unknown when the official results will be announced.
Bernardo Arévalo, presidential candidate for the Movimiento Semilla party, one of the most voted (11.77%) among 22 candidates for the elections, was in an exclusive interview with RFI and denounced that in Guatemala “Institutions are used to carry out illegalities.”
RFI: What is your reaction to the review of the electoral results that began this Tuesday?… A decision from the Guatemalan constitutional court.
Bernardo Arevalo: This has been a decision without legal support, to a request that has no legal support. What the political parties requested, the amparo, does not exist in the Guatemalan electoral legislation. Guatemalan electoral legislation is very clear in identifying the moments, procedures, and deadlines for presenting this type of challenge.
Those (deadlines) had all passed, the time did not exist and yet, they insisted on this request that it has no legal basis, but that it was also presented to the constitutional court that accepts it despite the fact that it does not have jurisdiction to hear this protection According to Guatemalan law, it should have been addressed to the Supreme Court of Justice or another amparo that exists, to a court of first instance, so we have a request for a recount that does not exist in Guatemalan law that is accepted and that orders a comparison to be made by a court that did not have jurisdiction to know the amparo. So it is evident that what we are facing is a process marked by illegalities and irregularities that is already a characteristic part of this corrupt system, where what is used are the formal institutions to carry out illegalities from those institutions.
Candidate Arévalo, do you consider that this request from the political parties arose after the surprise runoff by your party, the Seed Movement?
Of course, it is very clear, the parties that have presented this, are the parties that are part of that same corrupt political class that for 20 years has been constituted through elections, manage to get to be in positions of access to public funds or funds where decisions are made that can be transformed into influence in business and impunity, into corruption.
We came in second place, but we went to the ballot and this constitutes a surprise for which they were not prepared and which makes them see that clearly all this network of corruption is at risk because they lose everything to a government that they do not control and that they do not they will be able to control It is evident that they are behind this and they are demonstrating it in attitudes that some of these political parties have certainly had, among them fundamentally the party of the ruling party, the Vamos party, during the comparison sessions that are taking place at this moment, in where they have continued to request actions that are illegal and that do not exist within the electoral legal framework.
Sandra Torres, the candidate you would face in the second round, has published a statement on her social networks demanding that the second round be held on August 20. A position that you also share.
I understand that they were at some point in this recount request. I think after that they have separated. I believe that what interests us is defending the result of the first round of elections, because it is the result of a process that has already been observed internationally and nationally and that the observers have all clearly stated that it has been a regular peaceful process. , where there have been no fraud problems of any kind and where, in this sense, this is simply a logical objective, to demand that this result be respected.
If the judicial instances of Guatemala decided to return to the elections, what would be your position?
We are going to categorically oppose any decision that mocks the will of Guatemalans freely expressed at the polls, especially when these decisions have no legal basis, are made based on illegal processes and demands that make them a mockery of the state of right and a scam to democracy.
More than 60% of Guatemalan citizens did not vote for any political option. This phenomenon was explained to RFI by the political scientist Renzo Rosal, as a forceful message of disaffection towards the candidates and the political system in general. What do you think of this form of anti-system demonstration??
The vote for our option has been an anti-system demonstration. We clearly demonstrate against the system, but the null vote has also been a demonstration against the system and the blank vote. The difference is that those who are voting null or blank did not believe in the possibility that a political party could reach the runoff in the first round, especially after the trickery that removed three presidential candidates from the competition.
We persevered, we managed to reach the ballot, but now, at this moment, all this opposition against the system, all this call to make a profound transformation of the Guatemalan political system, we embody it and we can assert it from the Presidency of the Republic.
whatDo you think that those null or blank votes or the votes of citizens who did not attend election day could look to the Seed Movement in the future?
That is what we are clarifying, because our explanation or our call to them is to make them see that if their vote is against the system and what they were looking for was to achieve a null vote, if the objective is to have a repetition of the elections in conditions that allow the candidates to reach the second round… We have already achieved that at this time and consequently what remains is to join forces to move forward.
What does the international community say?
The mission statements of the Organization of American States, the State Department or other countries say precisely that there is no basis for this type of action and that what is necessary is to preserve the legal framework, that is, that any clarification is made within what is established by Guatemalan legislation and not what the Constitutional Court is doing, which is ruling on the basis of demands that have no legal basis and a court appearance that does not have jurisdiction to do so either. In other words, what the international community is saying is precisely that what the Constitutional Court ruled does not make sense.
Lastly, what’s next? What is the Seed Movement doing right now?
At this time we are already in the process of comparing the acts ordered by the Supreme Court after the protection granted by the Constitutional Court. We are not concerned about the comparison of the minutes because we know that it will confirm the result of June 25, but we call on the international community to be attentive to the type of illegal tricks and tricks that are being used to circumvent the vote and be attentive to the calls that must be made at the time for us from Guatemala to defend the vote and the international community to respond. Respond and support the people who in Guatemala fight for democracy.
