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
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary