MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Guatemalan Prosecutors want June 25 elections annulled

Prosecutors insist there were many irregularities around Bernardo Arévalo de León's win

Guatemala's Public Prosecutor's Office said this week that the voter rolls used in the elections won by Bernardo Arévalo de León “were not authorized” by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and therefore the results thereof were “null and void.” Arévalo had warned on Sept. 1 that Attorney General Consuelo Porras was carrying out a “coup d'état” against him to prevent him from taking office on Jan. 14 to succeed Alejandro Giammattei.

Prosecutor Leonor Morales also explained in a press conference Friday that the elections for president, national lawmakers, mayors, and lawmakers to the Central American Parliament should be annulled due to administrative irregularities “because the electoral minutes used were not the ones originally approved by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal,” who insisted that “the formats used were not the ones approved by the magistrates.”

The Public Prosecutor's Office also highlighted potential illegalities in the creation of Arévalo de León's Movimiento Semilla party in 2018, in addition to drawing the spotlight onto the candidate's alleged involvement in a case of money laundering.

Following these events, Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary-General Luis Almagro dubbed the actions undertaken by Morales and fellow Prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche “a coup d'état.”

The Uruguayan diplomat issued a document requesting Giammattei, the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court of Justice, and Congress to act against the “perpetrators of this attempt” to “defend the institutions and the constitutional order.”

In Almagro's view, “the attempt to annul this year's general elections constitutes the worst form of democratic rupture and the consolidation of a political fraud against the will of the people.”

Porras has repeatedly tried to reverse the outcome of Arévalo's surprise victory on June 25.