Guatemalan authorities raid electoral facilities, open boxes holding ballots
Agents from the Guatemalan attorney general’s office opened dozens of boxes containing votes and photographed their contents Tuesday in another raid on facilities of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.
Luis Gerardo Ramírez, spokesman for the tribunal, said that its officials had not given agents permission to open the boxes, and that the raid was carried out by the attorney general’s office under a judge’s order.
Preliminary results show a potential landslide victory for anti-corruption crusader Bernardo Arévalo, in a rebuke of Guatemala’s governing elite.
The attorney general’s office had asked to review at least 160 boxes containing votes from various parts of the country, Ramírez said.
The raid was apparently part of several investigations related to the national elections that culminated last month with the election of Bernardo Arévalo, who campaigned on an anti-corruption platform.
Guatemala elections registry suspends the party of Bernardo Arévalo, the progressive candidate whose presidential victory is newly certified.
The operation is being led by prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche, who has been investigating Arévalo’s progressive Seed Movement party. Curruchiche has been sanctioned by the United States on allegations of obstructing Guatemala’s fight against corruption.
The attorney general’s office confirmed Tuesday’s raid, but declined to say what it was related to. Judge Fredy Orellana, who has also been sanctioned by the U.S., issued the order to carry it out.
Guatemala’s Congress refuses to recognize lawmakers from the Seed Movement party of President-elect Bernardo Arévalo, after the party’s suspension.
There has been turmoil in Guatemala since Arévalo surprised many by winning a place in the presidential runoff against former first lady Sandra Torres. His subsequent victory in the general election worries the country’s elite and powerful because he has promised to restart the campaign against corruption.
The Biden administration has warned Guatemala against impeding democracy.
“This is unprecedented,” said Gloria López, electoral director of the tribunal. “The law does not establish a process for this.”
She said that only the receiving authority at each polling place on election day is allowed to review the marked ballots.
U.S. officials are warning Guatemala’s powerful military, political and business forces of the danger of subverting democracy ahead of Sunday’s presidential run-off election in the Central American country.
López said there are no digital backups for the ballots in the boxes that agents opened. She accused the attorney general’s office of breaking the Supreme Electoral Tribunal’s chain of custody by handling the votes.
“We would no longer be able to ensure what exactly are the votes that are inside the electoral boxes and what is the number of signatures and fingerprints on the [polling place tally sheets] that are going in the boxes,” she said.
Ovidio Orellana, former president of Guatemala’s bar association, said that there is no legal basis for giving a judge or prosecutors the power to touch election boxes or ballots.
“It is an arbitrary act,” he said.
Los Angeles Times staff contributed to this report.
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