[News] Coup Attempt in Guatemala: Attorney General Tries to Invalidate President-Elect Arévalo’s Victory

[Anti-Imperialist News]

orinocotribune.com
<https://orinocotribune.com/coup-attempt-in-guatemala-attorney-general-tries-to-invalidate-president-elect-arevalos-victory/>
Coup Attempt in Guatemala: Attorney General Tries to Invalidate
President-Elect Arévalo’s VictoryDecember 9, 2023
------------------------------

[image: Guatemalan President-elect Bernardo Arévalo (center) marches with
supporters and political and indigenous leaders, in Guatemala City,
Guatemala, December 7, 2023. Photo: EFE/David Toro.]

Guatemalan President-elect Bernardo Arévalo (center) marches with
supporters and political and indigenous leaders, in Guatemala City,
Guatemala, December 7, 2023. Photo: EFE/David Toro.

The attorney general of Guatemala tried to invalidate President-elect
Bernardo Arévalo de León’s presidential victory, claiming that the general
elections in which Arévalo was elected was plagued with irregularities that
would merit a declaration of nullity. This statement, made on Friday,
December 8, is being interpreted by various sectors as a coup attempt
against the elected government.

“The voting records of the closing of the scrutiny are null and void for
the general elections of president and vice president, deputies of the
Congress of the Republic by national list, deputies of the Congress of the
Republic by electoral district, municipal corporations, and deputies to the
Central American Parliament, because these records were not authorized by
the Supreme Electoral Tribunal,” said a representative of the Attorney
General’s Office, Leonor Morales Lazo, who is in charge of presenting the
case to the press.

Morales Lazo claimed that the TSE had delegated its own functions “to
national and international third parties,” in allusion to the acquisition
of a software “that served as a platform for the electoral event.”
According to the Attorney General’s Office, the electoral software was used
to commit fraud in the counting of votes.

Before Morales Lazo, the director of the Office of the Special Prosecutor
against Impunity, Rafael Curruchiche, spoke to the press, announcing the
invalidation of the elections. Curruchiche and Attorney General Consuelo
Porras have been condemned by the Puebla Group for carrying out a lawfare
to prevent President-elect Arévalo from taking office. In August, the legal
status of Arévalo’s party, Semilla Movement, was suspended by the judiciary.

*Electoral Tribunal responds: ‘The results are unalterable’*
In response to the declarations of the Attorney General’s Office, the
Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) of Guatemala stated that the results of
the elections, in which Bernardo Arévalo de León emerged victorious, “are
unalterable.”

“We have a president and a vice president who have been accredited and must
take office,” the president of the TSE, Blanca Alfaro, said in a press
conference held by the electoral body on Friday.

Alfaro ratified that both Arévalo and Vice President-elect Karin Herrera
must be sworn in on January 14, 2024, in strict adherence to the Guatemalan
Constitution.

“There is no way that the Supreme Electoral Tribunal could repeat any
election,” Alfaro emphasized. “If the elected authorities are not sworn in,
there would be a breach of the constitutional order.”

She explained that no authority can annul the elections “except if an order
comes from the Constitutional Court.”

She added that she was “surprised” at the statements coming from the
Attorney General’s Office and stressed that the elections were carried out
in strict adherence to the pertinent laws.

*OAS denounces coup attempt*
On Friday, the Organization of American States (OAS) called the actions of
the Guatemalan Attorney General’s Office a “coup attempt.”

“The General Secretariat of the Organization of American States condemns
the coup attempt by the Office of the Attorney General of Guatemala,” the
OAS said in a statement.

“The attempt to annul the general elections of this year constitutes the
worst form of rupture of democratic order and the consolidation of a
political fraud against the will of the people,” the statement added.

It is interesting to see anti-coup statements coming from the OAS this
time, given the organization’s track record in having supported a number of
coups across Latin America, including in Guatemala itself in 1954, against
then President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, and more recently in Bolivia in 2019
against the elected government of Evo Morales, and in Peru last year
against President Pedro Castillo who is still in prison.

(Últimas Noticias
<https://ultimasnoticias.com.ve/noticias/mundo/crisis-en-guatemala-por-intento-de-golpe-de-estado-contra-arevalo/>)
with Orinoco Tribune content

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/SC/AF


<https://orinocotribune.com/author/sahelicot92/>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20231209/5632aa13/attachment.htm>