source: The Guardian
The Guatemalan presidential candidate Bernardo Arévalo has denounced a police raid on his party headquarters as a “corrupt” show of “political persecution” just a month before the high-stakes runoff election.
Police raided the headquarters of Arévalo’s Semilla party on Friday, saying it was carrying out a 12 July court order that had canceled the party’s legal status.
Video from outside the Semilla party offices posted by the local newspaper Diario La Hora showed at least a couple of dozen uniformed police officers standing guard, preventing anyone from entering or exiting the building.
In a post on Twitter, Arévalo derided the raid as a “flagrant demonstration of the political persecution we have denounced”. The presidential hopeful has blamed the police action on a “corrupt minority” but did not go into further detail.
The raid follows an investigation into alleged irregularities in the registration of more than 5,000 Semilla members, which the party has denied and which has been widely criticized by rights groups as improper interference in Central America’s biggest democracy.
A court ordered the suspension of the party earlier this month shortly after the 25 June first-round presidential vote, in which the center-left Arévalo, running on an anti-corruption platform, secured a surprise second place and advanced to the 20 August runoff.
The targeting of Arévalo’s party has injected turmoil into the race to succeed the outgoing conservative president, Alejandro Giammattei.
Guatemala’s top court has granted the party an injunction and ruled that there are no legal impediments to Arévalo competing in the runoff, where he faces the former first lady Sandra Torres, who finished in first place in June.
Police also raided the electoral tribunal’s building earlier this month.
Prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche, whose office requested Semilla’s suspension, has previously targeted anti-graft campaigners and has been placed on the US state department’s Engel list for “corrupt and undemocratic actors”.
