• First round Sandra Torres is emerging as the winner of the first round in the elections of Guatemala
  • Migrations: The 'Northern Triangle' reaches out to Trump

Guatemala could raise this Sunday to the Presidency the first woman in its history who would hold this position: Sandra Torres, of the center-left party National Unit of Hope (UNE) . To do this, the candidate for the formation of rights shall be defeated at the polls. Alejandro Giammattei, who leads the latest polls published in the country, with a voting intention of 61.1%, compared to 38.9% of his rival . This despite the fact that in the first round of elections held on June 16 in which there were about twenty nominations, Torres surpassed Giammattei with twice as many votes.

In recent days, the election campaign has intensified, after Giammattei came to ask for support from citizens, because "if you vote for me, I will do everything in my power to put the lady in jail Sandra Torres. " Without still reaching the Presidency, the candidate went to the Prosecutor's Office last Thursday to ask for the roots of his opponent, so that he is prohibited from leaving the country and thus avoid a possible escape. Thus, Torres has on his head a sword of Damocles, since the Public Ministry (MP) wants to investigate it for the crimes of illicit association and illegal electoral financing in the 2015 election campaign, where he lost in the first and second round against the current president, Jimmy Morales.

Until now, Torres has been spared from being investigated thanks to the immunity conferred by his candidacy for the Presidency, although he would lose it the day after the election if he was not a winner, which would allow the Prosecutor's Office to even ask for prison against her for not reporting 27.7 million quetzals (3.4 million euros) received during the 2015 campaign. At the moment, the candidate is limited to saying that Giammattei is "bad of the head" for going to the Public Ministry to request that he be forbidden to leave the Central American country, while having avoided talking about the investigation against him. On the contrary, after winning the first electoral round, he remarked that the State needs to "cleanse itself of corruption . "

However, it supports the position of the current president, Jimmy Morales, who has decided not to renew the mandate of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), whose term ends on September 3. This UN entity, which since 2007 supports the Office of the Prosecutor in the investigation of corruption cases, has placed his brother, Samuel Morales, and one of his sons, José Manuel Morales, among the ropes, who are awaiting completion of the trial in which they could be sentenced to 11 and 8 years, respectively, for a crime of fraud after allegedly issuing false invoices to a State agency.

Likewise, CICIG and the MP have twice requested to withdraw immunity from Jimmy Morales so that he can also be investigated for the crime of illegal electoral financing allegedly committed in the last presidential elections of 2015, when he was secretary general of FCN Nación, formation He won in both laps. Specifically, they intend to investigate it by not declaring the origin of 6.7 million quetzales (837,500 euros) and concealing the income of 7.5 million quetzales (937,500 euros).

TWO CANDIDATES OF THE OLD POLITICS

Unlike what happened in 2015, when citizens, fed up with the corruption of today imprisoned former President Otto Pérez Molina, opted for the comedian Jimmy Morales who first ventured into politics, in the elections this Sunday the population must Choose between two candidates of the old politics of the country. Thus, Sandra Torres has tried up to three times to take over the Presidency, for which she tried to run for election in 2011, although the Constitution prevented it by prohibiting the relatives of the president from running for office in the country. This is despite the fact that the UNE candidate had already divorced her husband, Álvaro Colom , who was president of the Central American country between 2008 and 2012 and with whom she has four children. Therefore, Sandra Torres was already in the Presidential House during the mandate of Colom, in which she gained great prominence when launching all kinds of social policies, among which the program of 'solidarity bags' with food for families of scarce resources, as well as the 'solidarity canteens' or the 'solidarity scholarships' and which she intends to implement if she is appointed President this Sunday.

After his failed 2011 attempt, Torres was able to appear in 2015, although he was overwhelmingly defeated by Jimmy Morales, whose term ends on January 14, 2020. These four years have been marked by his obsession to expel CICIG from the country, as well as the tragedy in which state officials are involved in which 41 girls died and 15 others were seriously injured in a fire in a protective home where they were illegally locked up.

Likewise, Morales will leave his successor or successor the hot potato of the safe third country agreement signed with the Government of Donald Trump, which obliges migrants who go through Guatemala to request asylum in this country, preventing them from requesting it in the US. . However, it still does not enter into force, since the Constitutional Court accepted several appeals and forced any signature of an agreement of this nature to have the support of the Guatemalan Congress.

One of the people who raised an appeal was the Human Rights Procurator, Jordán Rodas, who in statements to ELMUNDO.es recalls that "the Vienna Convention is very clear in pointing out that any agreement signed under threats has no legal effect." In this regard, he points out "what more threats than what Donald Trump said of raising tariffs and putting a tax on remittances that Guatemalans in the US send to their families if Guatemala did not sign the safe third country agreement."

"EVERYTHING JIMMY MORALES HAS DONE HAS BEEN BAD"

Thus, Rhodes censures that "everything that Jimmy Morales and his Government has done has been bad for the country," although he is "optimistic" that there are "few days left until January 14," when he will be replaced by who I won the elections this Sunday. "Hopefully they learn the lesson of not doing what Morales did, since that would be a good start at the level of security, foreign policy and migration," he concludes.

On the other hand, the second candidate in liza, Alejandro Giammattei , is the fourth consecutive occasion in which he tries to preside over Guatemala since 2007 with different parties, although he had never reached the second round. The candidate of Vamos, father of three children, was already part of the Government of Óscar Berger as director of the Penitentiary System between 2005 and 2007. He also had problems with Justice, who imprisoned him for ten months in 2010, accused of extrajudicial execution of seven inmates in a prison in Guatemala in 2006. Subsequently, in 2011, the investigation against him was closed as no evidence of his participation was found. As a result of his time in prison, he wrote the book 'Story of an Injustice' and today is one of the fervent defenders of reinstating the death penalty in Guatemala for certain prisoners.

The elections of this Sunday are held in a climate of protests by the students of the Public University of San Carlos , who have taken since last July 30 the central campus and university buildings preventing classes from being held, which It has forced some voting centers to change. This action aims to "defend public education" against the actions taken by the rector of the University, such as increasing the cost of certain tests or implementing new security measures. Likewise, for several days, hundreds of Mam indigenous people spend the night in front of the Presidential House in Guatemala City to request the Government for the lands they have been requesting since 2016 so that 310 families can live and work.

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