Facing Electoral Defeat, Guatemala's Ruling Elites Undermine Nation's Democracy

Efforts to undermine the president-elect are taking a toll on his party and on Guatemalans standing up for democracy.

By Sandra Cuffe , TRUTHOUT
Published September 2, 2023



Guatemalans take part in an August 25 protest in Guatemala City to call for the attorney general's resignation due to election interference.
SANDRA CUFFE

Election authorities have certified Bernardo Arévalo as Guatemala’s president-elect, but efforts to destabilize his party and the election outcome persist and they are taking a toll on the population. Still, Guatemalans are speaking out to defend their democracy.

A progressive congressman and sociologist, Arévalo’s victory in the August 20 presidential runoff election was officially certified by the country’s electoral tribunal on August 28. Hours earlier, however, the tribunal’s citizen registry provisionally suspended the legal status of his party, Movimiento Semilla. The losing party, Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE), still refuses to concede, and prosecutors and judges already hit with sanctions by the U.S. continue to pursue legal action against Semilla as well as electoral tribunal magistrates and election volunteers.

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In 1954, a U.S.-backed military coup put an end to Guatemala’s decade-long “democratic spring” under two democratically elected presidents, the first of whom was Arévalo’s father. The country then descended into a 36-year civil war between leftist guerrillas and the army, leaving an estimated 200,000 people dead, the majority of them Indigenous Maya civilians killed by the army.

Quintana grew up during the armed conflict, under a series of military dictatorships that used extreme violence to quash dissent. He was alarmed but not entirely surprised when reports of two plots, one of which reportedly involved state actors, to attack and assassinate Arévalo were revealed on August 24 in an Inter-American Commission on Human Rights resolution ordering the Guatemalan government to take all necessary measures to protect the president-elect and his running mate, Karin Herrera.

“That type of situation is credible in this country,” he said, pointing to the 1979 assassination of Manuel Colom Argueta, a prominent left-wing politician, as an example.

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https://truthout.org/articles/facing-electoral-defeat-guatemalas-ruling-elites-undermine-nations-democracy/