Guatemala Elections: Campaign Begins Amid Public Mistrust

Guatemala city — The campaign began in earnest last month for Guatemala’s general elections, with political messages filling the streets, local broadcasts and social media.

But with less than three months to go before the June 25 vote, concerns are growing among domestic and international observers about the integrity of the process.

“There is a lot of mistrust in the environment around the elections,” Gabriela Carrera, a professor of political science at Rafael Landivar University in Guatemala City, told Al Jazeera. “This is the result of the inability of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal… combined with a series of arbitrary decisions that the magistrates have been making.”

At least 30 political parties are set to contest the upcoming elections, with more than 22,000 registered candidates running for the presidency, congress, regional parliament and councils across the country. But Guatemala’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal, which governs elections, has blocked several opposition candidates from running for “dubious reasons,” according to Human Rights Watch. Observers say this raises a red flag.

“The arbitrary blocking of candidates because they represent a danger to the (political) establishment is serious,” Ana María Méndez Dardon, director for Central America at the Washington Office on Latin America, told Al Jazeera. “It has also brought little credibility to the institutions that have to guarantee the integrity of the (electoral) process.”

A spokesman for the Supreme Electoral Tribunal told Al Jazeera that the body was following constitutional rules, noting that the cases in question are complex.

Blocked candidates include left-wing indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera, who came fourth in the 2019 presidential election, and Roberto Arzu of the right-wing party Podemos. Cabrera was blocked for an alleged problem related to a payment received by her running mate while he was ombudsman, while Arzú was disbarred for allegedly campaigning before the legal period.

Cabrera and his supporters have protested his exclusion since February. Meanwhile, a Guatemalan prosecutor is seeking to lift the immunity of another presidential candidate, Edmond Mulet, after he called for an investigation into a judge who ordered nine journalists from the newspaper El Periódico to be investigated. Candidates usually have immunity from prosecution during an electoral campaign.

Corruption accusations

While the Supreme Electoral Tribunal ruled against several popular candidates, it has allowed many others with alleged links to corruption to run for public office.

Zury Ríos, the daughter of the former dictator General Efrain Rios Montt and a candidate for the right-wing Valor party, is among the top presidential candidates, according to a February CID Gallup poll. Ríos, who previously served in Congress from the mid-1990s until 2012, was temporarily unable to run in 2019 due to a constitutional ban on family members of coup leaders holding the presidency. There have been a number of conflicting rulings over the years about whether such bans should apply.

His candidacy has the majority support of the Guatemalan economic and military elite, but his participation has raised concern among the families of victims affected by state violence during his father’s dictatorship. Last month, activists and victims of Guatemala’s 36 years civil warin which more than 200,000 people were killed or forcibly disappeared, he marched against his candidacy and called for more transparency in the elections.

Other candidates running for mayoral or legislative positions are accused of bribery, drug offenses or other criminal charges, including some that have been sanctioned by the United States.

“The Supreme Electoral Tribunal has accepted these candidates as a message of deep rejection of this type of sanctions,” said Méndez Dardón. “I mean, ‘I don’t care now.'”

These are the first general elections to be held since the closure of the United Nations-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, which close your doors following the 2019 vote, after the government chose not to renew his term.

Since then, judges, prosecutors and investigators associated with corruption or transitional justice cases related to Guatemala’s civil war have been targeted by authorities and far-right groups, with some forced into exile in recent years.

The setback of democratic institutions since the expulsion of the commission has culminated in the upcoming elections, which analysts say are the most worrisome since the country’s return to democracy in 1985 after years of military dictatorship.

“We are seeing the first restricted elections since 1985,” Edie Cux, a lawyer and election observer for the independent watchdog group Mirador Electoral, told Al Jazeera.

“There is a manipulation of the system, from registration, to the (practice of) buying votes, to the manipulation of the electoral and justice system. These elections qualify as restricted and a step toward autocratic rule.”