The Secretary General of the United Nations Organization (UN), António Guterres, called on Guatemalan institutions this Saturday to respect the human rights of its citizens, “including the right to vote in genuine periodic elections that guarantee the free expression of the will of the voters.”
Guterres’s statements are made in response to the raid on July 21 of the headquarters of the Seed Movement, of which presidential candidate Bernardo Arévalo de León is a part.
The Prosecutor’s Office has tried to suspend Semilla, ahead of the second round of elections, scheduled for next August, where Arévalo de León will face former first lady Sandra Torres.
Guterres noted in the statement that he follows the situation surrounding the elections in Guatemala “with great concern” and recalled that the member states “are responsible for guaranteeing transparent, free and fair elections, free of intimidation and coercion.”
“The Secretary General recalls that voters must be protected from any form of coercion and from any unlawful or arbitrary interference in the voting process, and that electoral institutions must be able to carry out their work independently,” the statement said.
The Guatemalan Constitutional Court, which has been stopping the attempts of the Prosecutor’s Office, reiterated on July 21 that the second round of elections scheduled for August must be carried out with the candidates Torres and Arévalo de León.
Arévalo de León managed to advance to the ballot after surprisingly obtaining second place in the elections on June 25, behind the former first lady, while the polls placed him in seventh or eighth place.
The Semilla group was born from the demonstrations against corruption registered in the Central American country during 2015 and which culminated in the fall of the Government of Otto Pérez Molina (2012-2015), currently in prison.