OAS Electoral Observation Mission in Guatemala Remains Alert to New Judicial Actions of the Public Ministry and Calls for Guarantees for Adequate Working Conditions for the TSE

Three days after the run-off, the mission reports that the Public Ministry had demanded from the TSE the identities of polling station members, members of the electoral review body and the data-entry and voting-centre coordinators for both 25 June and 20 August, and that it had learned of the Ministry's request for the withdrawal of the preliminary-hearing protection (antejuicio) of the TSE's Director of the General Registry of Citizens over the alleged crimes of abuse of authority and breach of duty. Quoting its own preliminary report, it states that Guatemala's democratic stability had been under intense and constant pressure from interventions by actors seeking to ignore, delay or reverse the officialization of results, intimidate electoral bodies and technical personnel, and plant doubts where there were no reasons for suspicion, producing an environment of confusion and legal uncertainty.