Guatemala’s president-elect faces legal challenges that seek to weaken him

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Guatemala’s Aug. 20 presidential election has been bogged down in court and legal challenges despite the fact the results were clear: Progressive candidate Bernardo Arévalo won about 61% of the vote to conservative Sandra Torres’ 39%. After weeks of uncertainty, the top electoral court finally certified Arévalo as the winner Monday.

But federal prosecutors are seeking to suspend his party, throwing into doubt whether he will have any support in congress. And Torres has filed court challenges seeking to overturn the election result, alleging fraud in the vote count — something none of the independent election observer groups reported.

How did it get so complicated?
Governmental corruption and impunity was so bad in Guatemala that in 2006 the country had to call in a United Nations-backed commission, known as CICIG, to combat it.

The commission’s work led to some serious results: In 2015, Guatemala became one of the few countries in the world to force a sitting president, Otto Pérez Molina, to resign and immediately go to jail, along with his vice president.

The next elected president, Jimmy Morales — and much of Guatemala’s political elite — decided things had gone too far. Morales kicked out CICIG in 2019.