As Guatemala begins high-stakes court elections, agents raid voting sites

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Just as Guatemala began to elect magistrates to its highest court on Thursday in a test of strength of its democratic institutions, prosecutors said they raided two voting locations in what lawyers and the country’s president said was an attempt to interfere in the elections.

The latest action — carried out by the internationally criticized Attorney General’s office — reignited tensions in a yearslong battle to root out endemic corruption plaguing the Central American country’s institutions.

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo and his anti-corruption allies have often clashed with prosecutors they accuse of rotting Guatemala’s justice system and making politically motivated arrests.

The agents who carried out the raid were led by Leonor Morales, a prosecutor sanctioned by the United States for trying to overturn Arévalo’s presidential win in 2023. Morales has also previously persecuted judicial officials fighting corruption. She refused to provide more information because it was an open investigation.

“Information (about the raid) cannot be shared, and I therefore request that the media be removed” from the premises, said Morales, whose team also briefly tried to block the entrance of lawyers who wanted to vote, though eventually voting resumed with agents watching.

Arévalo accused the prosecutor’s office of carrying out a “new attempt to undermine institutions and disrupt the normal functioning of the rule of law” in a video address to Guatemalans posted on social media.

The president accused the prosecutor’s office of seeking to frighten and intimidate voters, and he called on lawyers to cast their ballots and not allow the officials to alter the course of the elections as it tried to during his election in 2023.

“Guatemala’s democracy is not negotiable, it will not be intimidated, and it will not be taken away. It is to be respected,” he said.

Later, the Constitutional Court issued an injunction to keep the Attorney General’s office from intervening in the election or the vote count, but allowing it to continue its investigation.

The Organization of American States’ mission observing the process condemned the agents’ actions during the election.

“The carrying out of coercive measures — including raids, inspections, or the securing of documents — at polling centers while the electoral process is underway constitutes an extremely high constitutional risk,” the mission said in a statement. “The Mission warns that the strategic use of criminal or judicial tools at critical moments of constitutional appointments constitutes a pattern of institutional instrumentalization that erodes public trust, compromises judicial independence, and weakens the rule of law.”

Guatemala’s Constitutional Court has been at the center of the country’s battle against corruption. The court has ruled in high-profile cases on the future of an international anti-corruption commission and the release of a former president charged with corruption.

The Constitutional Court comprises five magistrates, and the president, Supreme Court of Justice, Congress, University of San Carlos and the country’s bar association each select one. Almost all of the current magistrates are hoping to be reelected.

On Thursday, the bar association was holding its election to pick its magistrate and alternate, the first for the new Constitutional Court. The other institutions will pick their representatives in the coming weeks.

A new attorney general will also be elected in the coming months to replace Guatemala’s outgoing top prosecutor Consuelo Porras, sanctioned by the United States and European Union for undermining democracy.

President Arévalo called the selection process “important and critical for democracy,” in an interview with The Associated Press last month.

“The democratic development of the country is on the line, the possibility of having democratic institutions where a culture of respect for the rule of law is built,” he said.

The Constitutional Court is Guatemala’s highest and its decisions cannot be appealed.

At the Constitutional Court, all 10 positions — five magistrates and five alternates — will be elected.

The high court’s importance is undisputed and that has drawn corruption into the selection previously.

When former President Jimmy Morales terminated the mandate of an anti-corruption commission known as the CICIG in 2019, the Constitutional Court acted as a key democratic safeguard and ruled his decision unconstitutional.

But the court took a turn when new magistrates were elected in 2021.

Human rights lawyer Rafael Maldonado said that “the last five years there has been a Constitutional Court made up of dark characters who have stopped any advance there could be in Guatemala.”

For example, the court in April 2024 upheld the release from prison of former President Otto Pérez Molina (2012-2015), who had been convicted in two separate cases of corruption.

Five judges and their backups will also be elected to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. In non-justice positions, a new federal comptroller will be elected, as will a rector for the University of San Carlos of Guatemala.

The elections are being closely watched because of the impact they can have on Guatemala’s justice system. The Organization of American States, a regional body, created a Special Mission for the Strengthening of Democratic Institutions in Guatemala to monitor the nomination processes and the European Union sent its own observation group.

Maldonado said the elections will determine “the consolidation of access to justice.”

Political analyst Renzo Rosal said the elections will “put democracy to the test.”

“It is the perfect laboratory to see how the institutions are steered toward greater cooptation, control and loss of independence, which has a direct affect on the citizenry,” he said.

Under Attorney General Consuelo Porras, Guatemala’s Public Ministry has been criticized for undermining corruption investigations and carrying out political prosecutions against former prosecutors, judges and journalists who reported corruption.

Porras’ office also played a key role in barring top anti-corruption candidates from running in the 2023 elections. It then pursued Arévalo’s political party in what many saw as an attempt to keep him from taking office after his surprising victory in a tumultuous election.

Arévalo requested her resignation, but she refused. He does not have the power to remove her before her eight-year run in the role ends in May. She is seeking election as a magistrate to the Constitutional Court.

The constitution says the president gets to select the attorney general every four years from a slate of six candidates proposed by a nominating committee made up of the president of the Supreme Court, the deans of the country’s law schools, the president of the board of the bar association and the president of the bar association’s honor tribunal.

Porras was first selected by President Morales in 2018 and then reelected by his successor President Alejandro Giammattei. She was accused of protecting both former leaders from investigation for corruption, something she has denied.

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