After meeting with the heads of several state institutions, the electoral monitoring mission of the European Union concluded that none of the 26 recommendations that the electoral observation mission did in 2023 has been executed, although there are advances in three.
Of that account, the head of both missions, Jordi Cañas, speaks with free press about the threats and challenges of Guatemalan democracy, with a view to the general elections of 2027.
After all the round of meetings with the powers of the State, with what perception does it go regarding the fulfillment of the recommendations before the 2027 electoral process?
That there are some of them that, depending on the conversations we have had, has opened the possibility of being able to promote them through a change of the law, a reform of the electoral law and political parties, seeking minimal agreements. That is what the main political forces of Congress have transmitted to us.
That is really within your priorities in the legislative agenda, I have my reservations, but I always prefer to be confident and trust what they tell me, because I think it is reasonable, that it is possible, that it would be good, because I think I would launch a message from the congress itself, to say “we are aware that we have to do some reforms, that we can get them from the consensus, because there are some reforms, not only that the report of the Mission of the Electoral Observation Mission of 2023 but they were collected in the OAS, in the reports of the local observations ”, and that there are many of them that are outside the ideological discussion of the different political forces, which could be of consensus, and that it would launch a message to the citizenship that, despite the atomization and the internal political debate,“ we are able to add to incorporate reforms that we believe are necessary to improve our democracy ”.
And although it is difficult and that it will probably face a difference in the priority of political agendas, I think it is possible, and as long as I can prefer to trust that if those who can drive them tell me that they can, because they are fulfilled.
Afterwards, there are others that could be implemented with a functional Supreme Court, and that also depends on the will of both the president and the alternate magistrates, who are de facto holders, because they are the de facto members of the organ, the organ is constituted and what it has to do is their work, and its work is to start preparing the 2027 elections with a transfer of powers in the 2026 European Union, which depend on the court.
Therefore, we prefer to be optimistic. We believe that what was raised in the 26 recommendations was possible, it was feasible, we reduced the number to just facilitate their implementation and delimit them in concrete and important areas of action, and we believe it is possible. But well, it will depend, like everything, on the political will, on the will of the magistrates of Supreme Electoral Court, and be able to approve them before the temporal limit, which is a year before the next elections.
At the recent conference he mentioned, when he talked about the 26 recommendations, that many things have happened, few good, what are those good things that happen?
Well, I have said it, because sometimes I get carried away by the general tone of the debate here in the country, but I would have said it backwards, many good and bad things have happened, and some very good have happened, and I will start doing what I had to have said in the press conference, which is saying that many good things have happened, but that some bad ones continue.
What are these?
In general, those that defined the context prior to the 2023 elections, but that were accentuated throughout the process, which is a co -optation of the deliberative or judicial organs of the country by a minor It belonged to that strategy, which won the elections and therefore is the legitimate president of Guatemala.
When, after the first round, it was seen that the strategy of two candidates controlled by that sector of Guatemala was not fulfilled, from there the entire process was questioned, a process that had begun to question with the elimination and suppression of numerous electoral lists that could question the second round. Any candidate who could have the possibility of going on the second round and breaking the designed scheme was automatically disabled, sanctioned, or prevented from presenting.
That is, it was a thing that has already begun to be clearly shown in the first electoral round, but that following the second round the setting of the result was unleashed, the search for suspension of the legal nature of the party he had won, but in the background, what was sought was to suspend the second electoral round so that the victory of Mr. Arévalo was considered illegitimate, since the party or the formation that had passed to the second round had no nature.
Then, not enough with all this, – they speak over – the fraud in the result, that is, like all the elements that were incorporated were dismantled by the reality itself, the narrative of fraud ended, a narrative of fraud that what it sought was to question both the election and the credibility of the new president.
That is, when you incorporate a narrative of fraud into an electoral result, that narrative is like a half that ends up extending, because it finds an echo in a world where many citizens, suddenly, believe that the earth is flat, when five years ago nobody said it were, and now suddenly there are more and more people than yes, who has come into saying that the earth is flat. So, when that happens, these strategies are used in other circumstances, in this case, delegitimize a result to delegitimize a government, to delegitimize the democratic process, and delegitimize democracy, and this is as gross and obvious as worrying.
What do you think has affected the implementation of the recommendations?
Reality. What has led us not to implement the recommendations? The reality, since it is a reality of an atomized Parliament, of a lack of impulse in the political agenda by those who said that the reform of the electoral law was a priority, the difficulties inherent in the same reform process, which are two thirds of the congress that makes it difficult to reach those reinforced majorities, the dysfunction of a supreme electoral court that has been punished for defending democracy and not folding the press of corrupt feeding electoral fraud, and therefore has meant the victory of a case over the TREP, which has been lost, and has turned the TSE into a dysfunctional or non -operational organ, since the reality that Guatemala lives, which is the country of eternal spring, the site where everything is possible.
He mentioned that the goal has to be in 2026. Why?
The question should be: What happens to Guatemalan democracy? That is, what are your problems? The electoral process is to guarantee democracy. It is an instrument of democracy to guarantee alternation, democratic continuity, that is, to keep democracy alive, which is not only a relationship of laws, constitutions, courts, organizations. No, no, no. It is a way of understanding how differences are settled in a political body, how the differences between citizens are settled, how they are articulated in deliberative mechanisms, which in turn are elected every x years, with the objective of guaranteeing something fundamental of a liberal democracy, the rights and freedoms of citizens.
So, what is the main threat to the rights and freedoms of citizens in Guatemala, and therefore to democracy, and therefore to its electoral process? The co -optation of the judicial organs, mainly, because there are others also, but mainly the co -optation of the judicial bodies by those who want The whole of democratic society, with the aim of silencing and paralyzing it, to maintain its prerogatives of power and its spurious control of the country as a whole.
Why did that co -optation occur? Because there are members that integrate those agencies that are not at the service of the citizen community, but at the service of the interests of a part.
In 2026 there are the configuration mechanisms, of appointments of the magistrates of the Supreme Electoral Court, of the Constitutional Court, of the Comptroller of Accounts, and especially the Public Ministry, well, especially of the Constitutional Court, but especially the Public Ministry also, which can return these organs to the whole of the citizens to normalize the judicial and political life of the country, to abandon the criminal prosecution of the criminal prosecuting and the criminal judicialization of the criminal policy.
They are those things that sometimes forget some in a democracy, and we sometimes forget to claim them, and we have already accepted that it is normal for an referee to be arbitrary, and that cannot be.
You have also mentioned that Guatemalan democracy has resisted very difficult moments, but how many more can endure?
Well, I look, I trust that many, and I hope that everyone, because it is not only Guatemalan democracy that has to face challenges, is democracy worldwide. What happens is that in Guatemala it has some singular challenges and specific and serious nature, but all democracies are besieged and in difficulties.
That is, democracy is a gymnastics that must be practiced every day, because it has to maintain a tone, a form, and that requires that the social body be aware that its rights of freedom is the foundation in which democracy works. With his problems, his improvement mechanisms, with those things that one criticizes, but that in the background there is an angular thing, that you are not afraid that someone will make you a judgment, that someone puts you in prison, or that someone limits your freedoms, or someone threatens you, and that that someone is part of those organisms that are to ensure that, so that it does not happen. That is, return to Guatemala to normal.
Normal things, political fights, differences, paralysis, all normal things, breach with electoral promises, which people get angry because the government has not fulfilled, all that happens in the whole world, but that has a difference here. And here to comment, to be a journalist, for being a member of an original people, for demonstrating on the street, for denouncing corruption, for having a clear position against the corrupt, for all that they can chase and imprison you. That is the paradox that the corrupt feel free and the Democrats feel persecuted, and that cannot be.