Guatemalan Court Allows Top Presidential Contender to Participate in Runoff

Guatemala’s constitutional court ruled Thursday that a center-left candidate who came in a surprising second place in the first round of presidential elections could participate in next month’s runoff, dismissing an order from a lower court that had suspended his party.

Central America’s most populous country was thrown into political turmoil on Wednesday following a court ruling that put the candidacy of Bernardo Arévalo at risk. From the beginning, the election process was marked by the banning of top candidates. Losing parties challenged the results of the first round.

Guatemala’s top anticorruption prosecutor, Rafael Curruchiche, said Wednesday that a court had suspended Arévalo’s Seed Movement.

Curruchiche alleged in a video statement that party members falsified thousands of signatures to register the Seed Movement in 2019. On Thursday, investigative police raided the offices of Guatemala’s electoral court in search of evidence.

Minutes after Curruchiche made his Wednesday announcement, the electoral court confirmed results of the June 25 first round. Former first lady Sandra Torres won 16% of the vote, and Arévalo received 12%. The two will face off in the second round on Aug. 20.

The constitutional court granted an injunction requested by the Seed Movement late Wednesday, allowing Arévalo to remain in the race, the court said. Electoral authorities also rejected the party’s suspension, saying that they would defend Guatemala’s democratic system against “any attempt to interfere in the electoral process.”

Arévalo, who has promised to do away with Guatemala’s endemic corruption, is favored to win the presidency. Torres, who has faced corruption allegations in the past, is unpopular in the capital and main cities, analysts say. She lost two consecutive runoff elections in 2015 and 2019.

Arévalo said earlier Thursday he was confident electoral authorities would reject his party’s suspension, which he said was “clearly unconstitutional.”

“The electoral campaign will continue,” he said. “We will not be diverted from victory.”

Manfredo Marroquín, the head of civic group Citizen Action, said institutions resisted pressures from the attorney general’s office. “The constitutional order has prevailed, for now,” he said.

Guatemala’s leading business organization, the Catholic church and farmer groups called for the electoral court’s validation of the first-round electoral results to be respected and for runoff elections to be held.

Brian Nichols, the State Department’s senior official for Latin America, said on Twitter Thursday that the U.S. expects a “free and fair” runoff in August between Arévalo and Torres. “The will and constitutional rights of Guatemalans…should be respected,” he said.

Guatemala’s presidential election had a turbulent start. Four presidential candidates, including one who was leading at the polls weeks before the election, were barred from participating ahead of the first round.

Arévalo, a sociologist, is the son of Juan José Arévalo, Guatemala’s first democratically elected president. He made it to the second round riding a wave of discontent with corruption, traditional politicians and the administration of President

More than 30 prosecutors and judges who worked closely with a United Nations-sponsored antigraft commission have fled Guatemala since 2019 when the commission was expelled from the country. Many of them say they feared being arrested. Most of them support Arévalo, who they say is the only hope of restarting the fight against corruption.

The U.S. has included Curruchiche and Guatemalan Attorney General Consuelo Porras in the U.S. Engel List of people banned from entering the U.S. on grounds they obstructed corruption cases and filed false complaints against former prosecutors who worked with the U.N. agency. Giammattei has publicly backed Porras.

A spokesman at the attorney general’s office said Porras and Curruchiche acted in accordance with the law. He said the former prosecutors abused their powers when they were in office.

—José de Córdoba contributed to this article.

Write to Juan Montes at [email protected]