Incoming Guatemalan president Cesar Bernardo Arevalo de Leon on Friday denounced an “ongoing coup” by the country’s institutions to block him from taking power, after his political party was suspended.
Arevalo, a 64-year-old sociologist, swept from obscurity to win an Aug. 20 election with his vow to crack down on graft, which observers say has alarmed a corrupt elite.
After a campaign marked by concerns of meddling, Arevalo was on Monday declared the winner of the poll with 58 percent of votes, but the electoral tribunal suspended his Movimiento Semilla, or Seed Movement, party.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“There is a group of corrupt politicians and officials who refuse to accept this result and have launched a plan to break the constitutional order and violate democracy,” Arevalo told a news conference on Friday. “These actions constitute a coup d’etat that is promoted by the institutions that should guarantee justice in our country.”
Arevalo pulled off a massive upset by advancing to the runoff after a first round marked by apathy among voters tired of the poverty, violence and corruption that pushes thousands abroad every year in search of a better life, many to the US.
After the first round of voting on June 25, Guatemalan judge Fredy Orellana, at the request of prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche, ordered the electoral tribunal to suspend Semilla pending an investigation into alleged anomalies in its registration as a party.
Orellana and Curruchiche are on a US list of “corrupt actors,” and foreign allies slammed meddling in the election process.
At the time, the court said a party could not be suspended in the middle of an election campaign.
However, with voting over, the suspension was confirmed.
“We are seeing an ongoing coup, in which the justice apparatus is used to violate justice itself, mocking the popular will freely expressed at the polls,” Arevalo said.
Analysts said the suspension would not prevent Arevalo taking up the presidential reins in January next year, but would impede his Semilla party’s work in the Guatemalan Congress. The party also cannot issue statements or collect money.
“They are weakening and denying the resources, authority and legitimacy that the people of Guatemala have legally conferred upon us,” Arevalo said.
The head of the electoral mission to Guatemala for the Organization of American States (OAS), Eladio Loizaga, also warned about a possible “break in the constitutional order in Guatemala.”
Speaking at an extraordinary meeting in Washington on Guatemala, Loaiza said the mission “considers that the abuse of legal instruments ... continues to cause a high degree of uncertainty in the process and puts the country’s democratic stability at risk.”
“Given the documented conditions, it is impossible that the Electoral Observation Mission would arrive at any other conclusion than that in this very specific case the mechanisms and tools of Guatemalan justice are being used politically” against Semilla, he said.
Arevalo on Tuesday last week said he has no intention of altering the status of his country’s diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but that he also wants to improve relations with China.
Additional reporting by AP and staff writer
FIVE-YEAR WINDOW? A defense institute CEO said a timeline for a potential Chinese invasion was based on expected ‘tough measures’ when Xi Jinping seeks a new term Most Taiwanese are willing to defend the nation against a Chinese attack, but the majority believe Beijing is unlikely to invade within the next five years, a poll showed yesterday. The poll carried out last month was commissioned by the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a Taipei-based think tank, and released ahead of Double Ten National Day today, when President William Lai (賴清德) is to deliver a speech. China maintains a near-daily military presence around Taiwan and has held three rounds of war games in the past two years. CIA Director William Burns last year said that Chinese President Xi Jinping
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday said that China has “no right to represent Taiwan,” but stressed that the nation was willing to work with Beijing on issues of mutual interest. “The Republic of China has already put down roots in Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu,” Lai said in his first Double Ten National Day address outside the Presidential Office Building in Taipei. “And the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China [PRC] are not subordinate to each other.” “The People’s Republic of China has no right to represent Taiwan,” he said at the event marking the 113th National Day of
REACTION TO LAI: A former US official said William Lai took a step toward stability with his National Day speech and the question was how Beijing would respond US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday warned China against taking any “provocative” action on Taiwan after Beijing’s reaction to President William Lai’s (賴清德) speech on Double Ten National Day on Thursday. Blinken, speaking in Laos after an ASEAN East Asia Summit, called the speech by Lai, in which he vowed to “resist annexation,” a “regular exercise.” “China should not use it in any fashion as a pretext for provocative actions,” Blinken told reporters. “On the contrary, we want to reinforce — and many other countries want to reinforce — the imperative of preserving the status quo, and neither party taking any
SPEECH IMPEDIMENT? The state department said that using routine celebrations or public remarks as a pretext for provocation would undermine peace and stability Beijing’s expected use of President William Lai’s (賴清德) Double Ten National Day speech today as a pretext for provocative measures would undermine peace and stability, the US Department of State said on Tuesday. Taiwanese officials have said that China is likely to launch military drills near Taiwan in response to Lai’s speech as a pretext to pressure the nation to accept its sovereignty claims. A state department spokesperson said it could not speculate on what China would or would not do. “However, it is worth emphasizing that using routine annual celebrations or public remarks as a pretext or excuse for provocative or coercive
RSS