By: Staff Writer
February 3, 2023
The Guatemalan elections will be held on June 25, 2023 to elect the president and vice president, all 160 seats of the Congress, all 20 members of the Central American Parliament, and mayors and councils for all 340 municipalities in the country.
“This year’s elections are a critical test for Guatemala’s fragile democracy,” said Juan Pappier, Americas acting deputy director at Human Rights Watch. “They 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.”
Key institutions such as the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court, the Comptroller General, and the Attorney General’s Office should guarantee Guatemalan citizens their political rights and protect the electoral process’ legitimacy. Many members of these bodies have been appointed through processes that were not fair, transparent, or independent, and have shown open disregard for the rule of law.
In recent years, the authorities in Guatemala have undermined the separation of powers and human rights safeguards in an effort to ensure impunity for widespread high-level corruption. The Attorney General’s Office has also pursued spurious criminal charges against independent journalists, prosecutors, and judges who have investigated and exposed corruption, human rights violations, and abuse of power.
Finding the right balance on democratic institutions is one thing, but also finding the proper solution to perceived human rights abuses is another.
Guatemala has seen the rollback of anti-corruption and anti-impunity efforts in the three years since the end of the United Nations backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, commonly known as CICIG, in September 2019. This rollback has led to attacks on the independence of the judicial branch and the concentration of power within the executive branch. It has also resulted in the prosecution of former investigators and prosecutors, and the exile of judges who were involved in cases of corruption.
On top of this, various scandals in the country’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), which oversees elections, have generated a lack of confidence in the electoral process. These scandals include the falsification of the doctorate of the head of the TSE and ties between members of the body and the ruling party.
Cconservative President Alejandro Giammattei, who can’t seek reelection, has an approval level of 24 percent. The candidates are equally as dis-enchanting as among those considered to be a frontrunner in the 2023 elections is Zury Ríos, the daughter of late dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, who was convicted of committing genocide against the Maya people and died in April 2018. Ríos is running with the far-right Valor Party in coalition with the Unionist party. She had been blocked in 2019 from participating in the election due to her father’s part in the 1982 coup d’etat that brought him to power. Her vice-presidential candidate, Héctor Adolfo Cifuentes, was accused of acts of corruption in 2019.
Another candidate, Edmond Mulet, who will be running for president for the Cabal Party, is accused of participating in a scheme to sell stolen children as part of an adoption racket during Guatemala’s thirty-six-year-long internal armed conflict.
Sandra Torres, who divorced her husband, former president Álvaro Colom in order to run for office, was herself accused of acts of corruption and illicit campaign financing during the 2015 and 2019 election cycles before her case was closed in 2022. Her vice-presidential candidate, Romeo Guerra Lemus, is an evangelical pastor with the Sion Church—even though Guatemala’s constitution prohibits religious leaders from running for higher office.
Roberto Arzú, the son of ex-president and former mayor of Guatemala City Álvaro Arzú who died in 2018, has launched a campaign with the Podemos Party, casting himself as a populist candidate. His vice-presidential running mate, attorney David Pineda, was involved in a scandal on public roads in 2014 and defended former President Alfonso Portillo in a corruption case.