Leading Guatemalan presidential candidate disqualified earlier than race

The Guatemalan Constitutional Courtroom has dominated to place an finish to the presidential marketing campaign of the darkish horse candidate Carlos Pineda, with just one month left earlier than the voting begins.

Pineda, a conservative businessman with a big following on social media, had appealed to the nation’s highest court docket after a choose suspended his candidacy per week in the past, citing failure to adjust to the nation’s electoral legal guidelines.

However on Friday, the Constitutional Courtroom upheld the decrease court docket’s ruling, which discovered Pineda failed to gather the signatures of get together delegates or submit required monetary reviews, as required within the nomination course of.

That call provoked a fierce response from Pineda, who had just lately emerged as the favourite in an electoral ballot.

“Corruption gained, Guatemala misplaced,” Pineda wrote in a publish on social media.

In one other, he mentioned that the Constitutional Courtroom had endorsed “electoral fraud” with its ruling: “We’re left with out democracy!!”

Pineda is the third candidate to date to be disqualified from the presidential race, with the primary spherical of voting scheduled for June 25.

His disqualification follows that of fellow conservative Roberto Arzú on Thursday.

Earlier this yr, a left-leaning indigenous candidate, Thelma Cabrera, was additionally excluded from the race after her working mate, former human rights official Jordán Rodas, was declared ineligible.

Rodas allegedly didn’t submit a letter confirming that he had no authorized proceedings pending in opposition to him, main a court docket to rule that his total candidacy, together with Cabrera, couldn’t register for the election.

Critics have denounced the disqualifications as politically motivated, with the intention of eliminating candidates thought of unfavorable to the institution of the federal government.

On Twitter, Juan Pappier, appearing deputy director for the Americas at Human Rights Watch, denounced Friday’s ruling as a “clear use of the judiciary to ensure an ‘electoral’ consequence.”

The administration of outgoing President Alejandro Giammattei has already been accused of stifling dissent in Guatemala.

Earlier this month, ElPeriódico, a 27-year-old investigative information outlet, mentioned it was “compelled” to stop its every day publications after “persecution” in opposition to its workers “intensified.” Its founder, José Rubén Zamora, had beforehand been arrested for cash laundering and blackmail.

And underneath Giammattei, about 30 authorized consultants and anti-corruption officers, together with judges and legal professionals, have fled the nation after his administration launched investigations in opposition to him.

Many of those figures have ties to the now closed Worldwide Fee in opposition to Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), an unbiased group backed by the United Nations to root out corruption within the nation.

Those that stay face attainable arrest and prosecution. On Friday, Guatemalan police arrested Stuardo Campos, a prosecutor centered on crimes in opposition to migrants who had beforehand labored on anti-corruption instances.