Taiwan on Tuesday expressed hope that Guatemala’s ongoing controversy over its newly elected leader would be resolved peacefully, days after prosecutors there tried to prevent Guatemalan president-elect Bernardo Arevalo from taking office next month.
Taipei was happy that Guatemala’s government had declared it respected the election results and had no intention of annulling them, said Cheng Li-cheng (鄭力城), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs.
The ministry will continue to closely follow developments in Guatemala while hoping it can soon resolve the disputes “peacefully and via a democratic process” and have a “smooth government transition” on Jan. 14, when the new president is sworn in, Cheng said.
Photo: Chen Yu-fu, Taipei Times
On Friday last week prosecutors in Guatemala, one of only 13 countries in the world that formally recognizes Taiwan, threatened to annul the victory of Arevalo, who is set to take office after a surprise victory in August.
However, after prosecutors sought to annul the election results amid accusations of an “attempted coup,” Guatemala’s electoral court said that the results were “unchangeable.”
On Wednesday last week, the Guatemalan government also completed a handover procedure with the incoming administration’s members accompanied by representatives of the Organization of American States, Cheng said.
Asked whether President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) or Vice President William Lai (賴清德) would attend Arevalo’s inauguration ceremony, Cheng said that the government would make an announcement in due time.
The timing complicates the issue, given that Taiwan is holding its presidential and legislative elections on Jan. 13, and Lai is one of the three candidates competing for the presidency.
Arevalo, son of former Guatemala president Juan Jose Arevalo Bermejo, won his country’s presidential runoff in August by beating former Guatemalan first lady Sandra Torres Casanova by a 61 to 39 percent margin.
However, since then he has faced an onslaught of legal challenges, including moves to suspend his party in an attempt to stop him from taking over as the country’s president, which has led to nationwide protests.
Cheng said Arevalo and his team reaffirmed during the campaign and after their victory that they had no intention of ending Guatemala’s diplomatic recognition of Taipei in favor of Beijing, though Arevalo did say he wanted better relations with China.
“We believe it is perfectly feasible to have good relations with both the [People’s] Republic of China and Taiwan,” Arevalo told Reuters during a post-victory interview in August.
Central America was once Taiwan’s staunchest base of diplomatic support, with all seven countries still recognizing the ROC as of 2006.
However, Costa Rica severed ties in 2007, followed by Panama, El Salvador and Nicaragua in 2017, 2018 and 2021 respectively.
Following Honduras’ decision to cut ties with Taiwan in March, Taiwan was left with only 13 diplomatic allies worldwide, with Guatemala and Belize the only ones in Central America.
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