Police push officials in election documents raid

On Saturday, police officers pushed and wrestled with judges at Guatemala’s highest electoral court as prosecutors attempted to confiscate vote count records from August’s presidential election. There were harrowing scenes of judges clinging to the boxes, as police tried to snatch them away as part of raids to investigate spurious allegations of voter fraud. Observers at the time said they saw no evidence of such fraud, and most in Guatemala see it as an attempt to weaken or disqualify the winning candidate, Bernardo Arévalo, the AP reports. Seventy-year-old Judge Maynor Franco, dressed in a suit and tie, refused to let go of a ballot box Saturday, even when a much younger officer tried to snatch it from him.

Judge Blanca Alfaro pleaded with officials not to take the boxes because they represented the will of the voters. She was pushed and she briefly fell to the ground during the fight. Saturday’s events occurred during the latest round of raids carried out by Attorney General Consuelo Porras and Prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche. International groups have said the effort is aimed at overturning or tarnishing the election results, and the Organization of American States expressed criticism on Friday.

Porras took over as attorney general in 2018 and in 2021 he was sanctioned by the US government for being an anti-democratic actor and undermining corruption investigations. She has denied any wrongdoing. Porras’ office has ongoing investigations into how Arévalo’s Semilla Movement gathered the signatures needed for its registration years earlier, as well as into allegations of election fraud that independent observers say are unfounded. (Read more Guatemala stories.)