Guatemala’s presidential election has been thrown into turmoil after a top prosecutor moved to suspend the party of a surging anticorruption candidate, threatening his bid to take part in a runoff and potentially dealing a severe blow to the country’s already fraying democracy.
The move on Wednesday could prevent Bernardo Arévalo — the lawmaker whose surprisingly strong showing in the first round of voting in June jolted Guatemala’s political class — from competing against Sandra Torres, a former first lady, in the Aug. 20 runoff.
Rafael Curruchiche, the prosecutor who mounted the case against Mr. Arévalo’s party, has himself been placed on a list of corrupt Central American officials by the United States for obstructing corruption inquiries.
Mr. Arévalo, in a news conference on Thursday, said he would proceed with his candidacy regardless, contending that under Guatemalan law political parties cannot be suspended during an electoral process.
“All of Guatemala is vigilant,” he said. “Those of us who are defending democracy are the majority, and we are clear in our rejection of that corrupt minority that is desperately trying to manipulate public institutions and violate the constitutional order.”
The development places even greater stress on Guatemala’s fragile democracy. Several top presidential candidates seen as threatening to the political and economic establishment had already been barred, press freedom had come under attack and dozens of prosecutors and judges focused on graft had been forced into exile.
“They are stealing the election in broad daylight, using one of the very institutions which is supposed to protect us,” Gustavo Marroquín, a history professor and columnist, said on Twitter.
The prosecutor’s move fueled confusion and anger in Guatemala’s capital, Guatemala City, where hundreds of people gathered in protest Wednesday shortly after the announcement. Mr. Curruchiche took the action as Guatemala’s election authority was preparing to officially dismiss efforts to delay the runoff, allowing the vote to proceed as planned.
When asked by reporters about the prosecutor’s move against Mr. Arévalo’s party, Irma Elizabeth Palencia, the election authority’s leader, said, “It is definitely something that worries us.”
Brian Nichols, the top State Department official for the Western Hemisphere, said on Twitter that the United States government was “deeply concerned” by what he described as Mr. Curruchiche’s “threats to Guatemala’s electoral democracy.” “Institutions must respect the will of voters,” Mr. Nichols added.
Mr. Arévalo’s party, called Semilla, or Seed, filed a motion with Guatemala’s top constitutional court appealing the ruling, setting the stage for a legal battle.
“We have never done anything illegal,” Samuel Pérez, who represents Semilla as a deputy in Congress, told reporters outside the constitutional court around midnight Wednesday. “What they are trying to do is to forge a case, as we had warned, to try to bring down the party or the candidacy of Bernardo Arévalo.”
Mr. Curruchiche, who leads the special prosecutor’s office against impunity, said the case against Semilla involved claims that it used more than 5,000 fraudulent signatures to qualify as a political party. After his office looked into it, a criminal judge ordered the suspension of the party’s registration, which could effectively ban it, and Mr. Arévalo, from competing in the runoff.
On Thursday, Mr. Curruchiche’s office raided and seized evidence at a government building that held documents filed by Semilla.
Legal experts questioned the move by Mr. Curruchiche, an ally of the outgoing president, Alejandro Giammattei. An independent watchdog group, Mirador Electoral, warned in a statement that the suspension “attempts to consummate an electoral coup equivalent to a coup d’état.”
Edgar Ortiz Romero, a constitutional law expert, said the move was “absolutely illegal” since only the electoral tribunal, not a criminal judge, can suspend a party’s registration under Guatemalan election laws.
“This places us in the sad group of countries with advanced authoritarian features in which the legal system is used to attack opponents,” Mr. Ortiz Romero said.
Still, some powerful people and institutions, including the country’s chamber of commerce, have spoken up against attempts to thwart the presidential runoff suggesting that “there is kind of a deep elite split going on right now,” said Will Freeman, a fellow in Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “This isn’t happening smoothly.”
Even Ms. Torres, who led the first round of the elections and is linked to Guatemala’s conservative establishment, criticized the move to leave her opponent out of the race.
The recent actions are “so extremely confusing, disconcerting and damaging to the transparency of Guatemalan democracy,” she said on Twitter said, calling the country’s election authority to respect the August runoff.
With the decision in the electoral tribunal’s hands, said Ana María Méndez, the Central America director at the Washington Office on Latin America, “they have the opportunity to get on the right side of history, vindicate themselves and defend the will of the people.”
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