The political class of Guatemala waits out in the open to start with an advantage in the elections

The Guatemalan Elvia Corado is part of the team of four people that the Humanist Party of Guatemala has stationed outside the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) day and night to line up and take care of the position that allows its presidential formula to register in the first positions .

“There are four of us and we are mostly rested,” says the woman to the voice of america while the hours of her “shift” as a volunteer on the outskirts of the TSE pass, which is scheduled to open the electoral process with the call for elections this January 20.

The parties began to bet on the outskirts of the headquarters of the electoral body from January 1 to have an advantage when running to the reception to register candidates. 29 political parties are registered to participate.

The electoral appointment, in which the successor to President Alejandro Giammattei, the plenary session of Congress and local authorities will be elected, is scheduled for June 25. To date, the electoral roll has registered more than 9 million voters, close to 100,000 could also vote from the United States.

Iris and Olga Marina comment to the VOA who have arrived at the TSE headquarters in response to the leadership’s call “to collaborate” to ensure that their party registers in the top positions, which entails having a privileged location of the Cabal Party flag on the ballot they will mark the electors.

The long stays outdoors have made them install a stove to make coffee, talk among themselves and with the other opposition volunteers who keep in the same conditions.

But standing in line for so many days is not a guarantee that the party whose site these representatives take care of will be able to place the flag among the first.

Arriving first will only imply an advantage in the position to fill out the registration form, but it does not guarantee that the requirements for the candidates are complete and each party must correct those minutiae in the following days.

“The volume of people has attracted attention, they do it because the organization that first manages to register their presidential binomial on previous occasions has had the opportunity to choose the box where they want their flag to appear, this is whether it will be maintained or not, we will know next Friday” he told the VOA TSE spokesman Luis Gerardo Ramírez.

The spokesperson also stressed that it is not the first time that political institutes have queued up, since after reforms to the Electoral Law in 2016 that possibility was opened.

Voting abroad limited

In Washington, Carlos Lam, a representative of the Guatemalans without Borders movement, spoke with the voice of america on the effort as a civil society organized abroad to be seen and heard in this process.

However, he is wary of how the mechanism for electing his authorities is structured, and the spaces for participation from the United States, where there are at least 85,000 Guatemalans who have registered to vote.

He regrets that you can only vote from that country, although he acknowledges that it is the nation where the largest number of his compatriots live and who feed the economy with their remittances.

Having said that, he considers that the coverage that the TSE offers is limited given the distances from one city to another in the North American country. In the previous elections, four voting centers were opened for the entire country.

“They divided the entire United States into four, a person who lives in Boston for example had to travel to New York to vote, they don’t; or someone in San Francisco had to go to Los Angeles, no one is going to drive 6, 7 or 8 hours to go vote ”, she points out.

As for the political issue, he sees it as even more delicate, he says that the statements from the United States government show the seriousness of the situation, since high-ranking central government officials, deputies, and mayors are listed on the Engel Listfrom the State Department and Congress to point out corrupt and undemocratic actors.

“The elections will be almost like a symbolism, a procedure that will give participation to the political parties, but in the end, the machinery, the influences and the money that move under the table will always prevail,” he commented.

Spokesman Ramírez, from the TSE, warned that the institution “does not count votes”, it only manages results because everything is delivered to the citizenry and it is the departmental instances that carry out the counting.

If none of the presidential formulas manages to exceed 50% of the votes, plus 1, the electoral law of Guatemala contemplates the holding of a second round where the two most voted political forces take office.

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