5 months ago
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By Sofia Menchu
GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) -Guatemala’s top electoral court does not intend to hold a repeat of this year’s general election after federal prosecutors said they considered the first-round vote null, the court’s president said on Friday.
“At this time there is no way the Supreme Electoral Tribunal is going to repeat the elections,” the court’s president, Blanca Alfaro, told journalists. “The results are unalterable.”
Earlier in the day, prosecutors from the attorney general’s office declared they would attempt to annul the results of June’s first-round elections in which long-shot anti-graft candidate Bernardo Arevalo earned a surprise spot in the election’s runoff.
Arevalo then won the second round of voting in August. He is slated to take office on Jan. 14.
The Organization of American States (OAS) condemned what it called an “attempted coup d’etat” by Guatemala’s prosecutors’ office.
“There is absolutely no time for us to be able to repeat any election,” said Alfaro, adding that keeping elected officials from taking office would be “a break in the constitutional order.”
Prosecutors allege irregularities in voter registrations ahead of the elections and in data collected the day of the June first-round vote.
International players, including the United States and regional rights bodies, have decried the investigation, calling it an attempt to bar Arevalo from taking office.
(Reporting by Sofia Menchu; Writing by Brendan O’Boyle; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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