By Edgar CALDERON
GUATEMALA CITY, Oct 6, 2023 (AFP) – Demonstrators in Guatemala blocked roads for a fourth straight day and extended the protests to new areas as they denounced what they call a campaign to prevent anti-corruption crusading president-elect Bernardo Arevalo from taking power.
The mainly Indigenous protesters are using vehicles and tree branches to cut off key roads leading to the borders with Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras. In some spots they number in the hundreds while in others they surpass 1,000.
Arevalo returned from Washington, where in a speech he denounced what he called a “slow motion coup” against him and met with civil society organizations.
Arevalo, due to take office in January, is a political outsider who scored a shock upset win at the polls in August. His win and his pledge to fight graft is seen here as having alarmed an old guard political elite.
“This is an opportunity to reiterate that appeal to keep up national unity around peaceful protests against attempts to violate the electoral and constitutional process,” he told a news conference.
So far the road block protests have been concentrated in the west of the country but Thursday they spread north and south. The number of roads blocked has gone up from 20 to 33 in a day, the Traffic and Road Safety Directorate said.
The protesters waved white and blue national flags and chanted for the resignation of Attorney General Consuelo Porras; the prosecutor leading an anti-corruption unit, Rafael Curruchiche; and judge Fredy Orellana. The protesters accuse these three officials of trying to keep Arevalo from taking power.
Arevalo has faced obstacles ever since he survived the first-round vote in June as prosecutors moved against his party, alleging irregularities in its founding and trying to suspend it.
Arevalo has described the legal moves against him as amounting to a coup to deny him the presidency.
Prosecutor Curruchiche last week sent security forces to the country’s highest election court to seize boxes of voting records from the election.
On September 12, the headquarters of the body that oversees elections was subjected to a similar raid.
After the raids, Arevalo filed suit against Porras, Orellana and Curruchiche. He asked the Supreme Court to take unspecified measures to guarantee the results of the election, in other words his victory.
But the Supreme Court rejected the suit on Wednesday, said Leonel Marroquin, one of the judges sitting on the court.
The complaint by Arevalo is one of a series of legal actions he has taken in court seeking to protect his win at the polls so he can take power in January.
