Guatemala - 2023 Election
The only thing that changes in Guatemala is the names of its presidents, as the same corrupt power structure remains.
Guatemala is a multiparty constitutional republic. The country has a one-term presidential limit. Guatemala held general elections for president, legislators, and mayors in June 2023, in a context of deterioration of human rights safeguards. On 25 June 2023, Guatemalans elected 160 lawmakers, 20 representatives to the Central American Parliament, and 340 mayors, who will exercise their functions from 2024 to 2028. Run-off elections were scheduled for August 20, 2023. These elections are crucial for Guatemala’s fragile democracy and will take place in a context of deterioration of the rule of law, where the institutions charged with overseeing the elections have little independence or credibility.
Guatemala is one of the most unequal countries in Latin America, according to the World Bank. More than half its inhabitants live in poverty and half of all children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition, according to the UN. Insecurity is another major election issue. Guatemala's homicide rate is 17.3 per 100,000 inhabitants -- almost three times the world average, according to the UN. In 2022 there were 4,274 murders, half of them attributed to drug trafficking and gangs that are mainly engaged in extortion and contract killings.
The country last held national and local elections in 2019. Voters elected Alejandro Eduardo Giammattei Falla as president for a four-year term beginning January 2020. International observers considered the presidential election as generally free and fair.
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; transnational repression against individuals in another country, including threats, harassment, surveillance, coercion, and misuse of international law enforcement tools; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including threats of violence against journalists and unjustified arrests or prosecutions against journalists; serious government corruption; lack of investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting members of Indigenous groups; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex persons; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting persons with disabilities; and significant restrictions on workers’ freedom of association, including violence and threats against union leaders.
The judicial system generally failed to provide fair or timely trials due to inefficiency, corruption, and intimidation of judges, prosecutors, and witnesses. Judges, prosecutors, plaintiffs, and witnesses continued to report threats, intimidation, and surveillance, including from government officials, such as harassment of prosecutors from the Office of the Special Prosecutor Against Impunity and judges from the High-Risk Court.
The law provides for freedom of expression, including for members of the press and other media, but the government did not always respect this right. The intimidation of journalists increased during the year and resulted in significant self-censorship. Many journalists reported being followed or having to flee the country after publishing work that was critical of influential citizens. Independent media were active and expressed a wide variety of views. Nonetheless, reporters covering organized crime, including its links to corrupt public officials, acknowledged practicing self-censorship due to the danger investigative journalism created for them and their families.
Efforts to undermine institutional safeguards against the abuse of power have increased since the expulsion of the United Nations-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala, CICIG) by then-President Jimmy Morales in late 2019. Since then, a large part of Guatemala’s justice system has been co-opted by a network of corrupt political, economic, and military elites seeking to advance their own interests and carry out corrupt practices with impunity.
Impunity, including by high-level officials, continued to be widespread. Corruption, efforts by organized criminal actors to secure impunity, and undermining of anticorruption institutions and the judiciary by corrupt political actors made it difficult for meaningful investigation and prosecution of crimes, including corruption and human rights abuses, involving public officials.
There were no confirmed reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, but there were killings of activists under suspicious circumstances, and corrupt police were involved with violent criminal organizations responsible for killings. The criminal organization “Los OAJACA” was responsible for drug trafficking, contract killings, kidnappings, extortion, illegal firearms sales, and smuggling.
The government’s prosecution of Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez continued in 2022 without resolution. Rodriguez Sanchez, intelligence chief under then President Rios Montt, was accused of genocide against the Maya Ixil community during the country’s 36-year internal armed conflict (1960-96). In February 2021 an appellate court ruled that genocide occurred against the Indigenous Maya Ixil people, but the appellate court chose to uphold the ruling in the 2018 trial that acquitted Rodriguez Sanchez of all crimes of genocide. In March 2021 the Public Ministry appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, but as of September, a final resolution had not been issued.
The Public Ministry moved forward cases of human rights abuses from the internal armed conflict era. In the genocide case of Luis Enrique Mendoza Garcia, operations commander under then President Rios Montt, Judge Silvia de Leon of High-Risk Court C ordered the case to come to public trial. The Public Ministry continued investigation of another case of genocide of the Maya Ixil community from the last months of former President Romeo Lucas Garcia’s government (1978-82).
The Public Ministry continued to investigate and prosecute cases of forced disappearances from the internal armed conflict period, although at times Attorney General Maria Consuelo Porras stalled progress in cases of genocide and disappearances from that period. The “Diario Militar” case continued against 14 former government and military members who were accused of crimes against humanity, including forced disappearances in 1983 and 1985 during the 30-year internal armed conflict.
Lengthy pretrial detention was a problem. As of September 13, prison system records indicated 48 percent of prisoners were in pretrial detention, slightly higher than in 2021. The law establishes a one-year maximum for pretrial detention, regardless of the stage of the criminal proceeding, but the court has the legal authority to extend pretrial detention without limits as necessary. Authorities regularly held detainees past their legal trial-or-release date. Lengthy investigations and frequent procedural motions by both defense and prosecution often led to lengthy pretrial detention, delaying trials for months or years.
The judicial system generally failed to provide fair or timely trials due to inefficiency, corruption, and intimidation of judges. The Public Ministry, however, rapidly obtained warrants for the arrest of former and current anticorruption prosecutors, just days after receiving legal complaints against them. Some of these complaints were filed by individuals and organizations with a history of threatening justice officials.
Despite numerous allegations of corruption in all branches of the government, few high-level cases were investigated during the year, and anticorruption efforts within the judiciary stalled. Prominent anticorruption prosecutors were arrested, fired, or removed from significant cases, and corrupt actors threatened independent judges by filing complaints based on spurious charges to strip the judges of immunity to prosecution.
The judiciary suffered from inefficiencies and a legal system that often permitted spurious complaints. In one such example, the Supreme Court lifted High-Risk Court Judge Pablo Xitimul’s immunity from prosecution and suspended him for abuse of authority against a patrol officer who detained Xitimul at a traffic stop after the officer lodged a complaint against him. Xitimul was the judge responsible for ruling on several emblematic cases of military internal armed conflict-era human rights abuses and corruption. Civic judicial integrity associations considered the lifting of his immunity over a minor incident to be politically motivated.
Independent media were active and expressed a wide variety of views. Nonetheless, reporters covering organized crime, including its links to corrupt public officials, acknowledged practicing self-censorship due to the danger that investigative journalism created for them and their families. Many journalists reported being harassed, prosecuted, or having to flee the country after publishing work that was critical of influential citizens. Members of the press reported receiving pressure, threats, and retribution from public officials and criminal organizations regarding the content of their reporting.
Observers and public complaints noted increased activity by netcenters, which were collections of social media accounts organized to appear as independent individual users but were in fact centrally controlled. Goals of netcenters were to manipulate discussions, spread misinformation, and threaten persons on the internet. Netcenters created fake social media accounts, including on Twitter and Facebook, to criticize and defame journalists, judges, prosecutors, and citizens who report on corruption. Attacks coming from netcenters were crucial in the intimidation of journalists reporting on corruption.
The Organization of American States and other international observers found some irregularities in the electoral process for the last national elections in 2019, but none was significant enough to discredit the legitimacy and validity of the elections. President Giammattei and the elected congressional deputies took office in January 2020 without disturbance. The Public Ministry continued to investigate allegations of illicit campaign financing in the 2015 elections, including a case against Sandra Torres and the National Unity of Hope Party. A substitute judge in High-Risk Court A granted Torres house arrest during her pretrial detention; in August 2021 a three-judge appellate panel granted her permission to participate in political activities with her party while under house arrest. In November 2022 High Risk Court judge Claudette Dominguez dismissed the charges against Torres, citing insufficient evidence.
On 16 February 2023, Guatemalan farmers blocked twelve national highways to protest against a judicial decision that prevents Indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera from taking part in the June 25 presidential elections. Militants of the Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples (MLP) also took to the streets to protest against the judges who rejected a legal appeal presented by Cabrera's lawyers. "The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) is blocking the registration of opposition candidates," the MLP denounced before the international community.
On 03 February 2023, electoral authorities did not allow Cabrera's candidacy to register, arguing that her vice-presidential candidate, Jordan Rodas, did not meet all legal requirements. Supposedly, there is a complaint against him for his performance as human rights attorney.
As a consequence, Cabrera and Rodas must now go to the Constitutional Court to try to reverse the ruling against their candidacies. If Thelma Cabrera is actually allowed to run she could usher in the first democratic government since the 1954 Coup. The 52-year-old Indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera participated for the first time in the 2019 elections, obtaining fourth place with 10 percent of the votes cast. This time, however, she has strong options to emerge victorious in the presidential race.
According to local analysts, this possibility has mobilized the Guatemalan far-right elites and corrupt groups to avoid her participation in the upcoming elections. "Preventing the registration of Thelma Cabrera as a presidential candidate is an act of racism," pointed out Bernardo Caal Xol, a 50-year-old trade unionist who was wrongfully imprisoned for defending the rights of the Indigenous Maya Q'eqchi' people. "The Guateman State was created by a small group of people in 1821," this environmenta activist said to emphasize the discriminatory practices that white elites seek to preserve.
In March 2023 campaigning began in earnest for Guatemala’s general elections, with political messaging filling the streets, local broadcasts and social media. But less than three months before the June 25 vote, concerns are mounting among national and international observers over the integrity of the process. “There is a lot of distrust in the environment around the election,” Gabriela Carrera, a political science professor at Rafael Landivar University in Guatemala City, told Al Jazeera. “This is the result of the incapacity of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal … combined with a series of arbitrary decisions that the magistrates have been taking.”
At least 30 political parties are set to contest the upcoming elections, with more than 22,000 candidates registered to run 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 on “dubious grounds”, 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 Maria Mendez Dardon, the Central America director for the Washington Office on Latin America, told Al Jazeera. “It has also brought little credibility to the institutions that have to ensure the integrity of the [electoral] process.”
A spokesperson for the Supreme Electoral Tribunal told Al Jazeera that the body was following constitutional norms, noting that the cases in question are complex. The blocked candidates include leftist Indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera, who earned fourth place in the 2019 presidential election, and Roberto Arzu of the right-wing Podemos party. Cabrera was blocked over an alleged issue related to a payment received by her running mate while he was ombudsperson, while Arzu was barred for allegedly campaigning ahead of the legal period.
Cabrera and her supporters have protested her exclusion since February 2023. 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 a probe of nine journalists from El Periodico newspaper. Candidates usually have immunity from prosecution during an election campaign.
While the Supreme Electoral Tribunal ruled against several popular candidates, it has permitted many others with alleged ties to corruption to run for office. Zury Rios, the daughter of former dictator General Efrain Rios Montt and a candidate with the right-wing Valor party, is among the presidential frontrunners, according to a February CID Gallup poll. Rios, who previously served in congress from the mid-1990s to 2012, was temporarily blocked from running in 2019 because of a constitutional ban on family members of coup leaders holding the presidency. There have been a number of conflicting rulings over the years on whether such bans should be enforced.
Her candidacy is largely supported by the Guatemalan economic and military elite, but her participation has raised concerns for the families of victims affected by state-led violence during her father’s dictatorship. Last month, activists and victims of Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, in which more than 200,000 people were killed or forcibly disappeared, marched against her candidacy and called for more transparency in elections.
Other candidates running for legislative or mayoral positions stand accused of bribery, drug offences or other criminal charges, including some who have been sanctioned by the United States. “The Supreme Electoral Tribunal has accepted these candidates as a message of deep rejection of these types of sanctions,” Mendez Dardon said. “It is saying, ‘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 shut its doors following the 2019 vote, after the government opted not to renew its mandate. 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 being forced into exile in recent years.
The rollback of democratic institutions since the expulsion of the commission has culminated in the upcoming elections, which analysts say are the most worrying 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 with the independent watchdog group Mirador Electoral, told Al Jazeera. “There is a manipulation of the system, from registration, to the [practice of] purchasing votes, to the manipulation of the electoral and the justice system. These elections qualify as restricted and a step towards autocratic rule.”
Twenty-two candidates remained in the running with three in a clear lead: a former first lady, a UN diplomat, and an ex-dictator's daughter. "All the candidates are the same and only come to rob (the people). I still don't know if I'm going to vote," street vendor Nestor Figueroa told AFP in the capital Guatemala City.
Center-leftist Sandra Torres -- the ex-wife of deceased former leftist president Alvaro Colom -- led with 21.3 percent, according to the most recent poll by the Prensa Libre newspaper, followed by centrist career diplomat Edmond Mulet with 13.4 percent. In third place, with 9.1 percent, is right-winger Zury Rios, daughter of former military strongman Efrain Rios Montt. The candidate of President Alejandro Giammattei's party, Manuel Conde, is fourth with 5.8 percent. Torres and Rios have both evoked the tactics of Nayib Bukele in neighboring El Salvador in his controversial "war" on gangs which has won him adoration at home but opprobrium abroad over rights concerns. Thousands of Guatemalans flee the country every year in search of a better life abroad, many of them undertaking the dangerous, illegal journey to the United States only to be deported.
The polls indicate a high possibility that the election will go to a runoff on August 20, with no single candidate likely to obtain the 50 percent minimum share of votes required to win in the first round.
Two serious candidates have been ruled out of contention by the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), in decisions critics have condemned as flawed. Carlos Pineda, who was the poll favorite at the time, lost a Constitutional Court appeal in May against his disqualification by the TSE for alleged irregularities in the registration of his candidacy. Also out of the running, over allegations of financial impropriety against her vice-presidential running mate, is Thelma Cabrera -- a representative of the Mayan Indigenous group that makes up 40 percent of Guatemala's population.
According to the Prensa Libre poll, distrust is high in the TSE and its perceived obscure decision-making, with more than one in ten saying they intended to cast a blank vote in protest.
Some 9.4 million of the country's 17.6 million people were eligible to take part in the election to replace conservative Giammattei, accused of increasing authoritarianism. About three-quarters of the population disapprove of his leadership of a country riddled with poverty, violence and graft.
Observers, rights activists, Indigenous groups and candidate Mulet have criticized what they perceive as increasingly iron State grip on institutions in a bid to protect a corrupt system benefiting those in power. Under Giammattei, several former prosecutors of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a UN-backed entity closed by the government in 2019, have been arrested or forced into exile.
In June 2023 this month, the founder of a newspaper critical of the government was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of money laundering dismissed as fake by press freedom groups. The newspaper founded by Jose Ruben Zamora has been forced to close, and several of its journalists have fled the country. Giammattei's Attorney General, Maria Consuelo Porras, is on a US list of "corrupt actors." "All state institutions, including the electoral (body), are being manipulated by powerful groups linked to corruption and traditional oligarchal power," Edie Cux, director of the local chapter of NGO Transparency International, told AFP. At stake, he added, was "the rule of law, democracy and all guarantees and freedoms for the entire population."
The election proceeded to a runoff on August 20. Former First Lady Sandra Torres fell short of the required 50% plus one vote for an outright victory, even though she was set to win the first round. None of the other presidential candidates polled near the required 50% threshold. Over 20 candidates are vying for the presidency, including career diplomat Edmond Mulet and Zury Rios, daughter of the late dictator Efrain Rios Montt.
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