Transparencia Electoral demands stop to hostilities and pressure on the Supreme Electoral Tribunal of Guatemala

Since the end of the election day on June 25th, 2023, a series of unprecedented institutional pressures have been placed on the Supreme Electoral Tribunal of Guatemala (TSE) with the clear intention of affecting the results of the electoral process administered by it, and which culminated on in August 20th with the runoff between Sandra Torres (UNE) and Bernardo Arévalo (Semilla).

On July 13th, Transparencia Electoral spoke out against the first raid on the headquarters of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and the intense judicialization of the electoral process. After the measure granted by the Constitutional Court, a vote recount was carried out that was certified by the Tribunal and the veracity of which was once again endorsed by the Electoral Observation Missions of the European Union and the Organization of American States (OAS).

The Attorney General’s Office had already exceeded its faculties in its attempts to suspend the legal status of the Semilla Movement, which unleashed the suspension of the recognition by the Chair of the Congress of the Republic of the representatives elected by that political party, a process that since then has been reverted.

Given that on July 20th there was another raid on the Human Resources offices of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the one carried out today would be the third one, also by order of the Attorney General’s Office, and this time involving the Department of Citizen Registry and the Electoral Process Operations Center, where the ballots used during the election days of June 25th and August 20th are kept.

Transparencia Electoral categorically rejects these efforts to subvert the will expressed at the polls in this electoral process and hopes that Guatemalan institutions make room for reason and the rule of law to avoid the deepening of the institutional crisis that the country is going through.