Global Courant
The electoral process has accumulated 107 amparo actions, according to the records held by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), a figure that worries experts who consider that the elections have been judicialized.
This phenomenon had already been exposed in the 2015 and 2019 elections, but this time the sources have detected how the amparo action has been gaining ground to demolish or allow candidacies.
Official data from the electoral body indicates that of the 107 amparo actions, 56 have already been resolved, but there are still 51 amparo actions that are still pending a final resolution.
It was precisely a provisional amparo that kept Carlos Pineda out of the voting process, who led the intention to vote and whose candidacy, along with all those of Prosperidad Ciudadana, was provisionally suspended.
Other political offers for the presidency that did not complete their registration are Roberto Arzú from Podemos and Thelma Cabrera from the Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples (MLP).
The legal actions of the 2023 electoral process did not remain exclusively in the presidential court, legal actions also stopped and kept out politicians who seek to reach Congress.
Some of them are Alfonso Portillo and Manuel Baldizón, both convicted in United States courts for acts related to money laundering.
14 days after the voting process, the 51 pending appeals raise alerts among analysts, who consider that the prosecution is clear in the event, but highlight other factors.
Hundreds of protections
The number of protections that are known at this time could increase, since after the general elections and the results are known, as in other years, they give space to a new stage of challenges.
Edgar Ortiz, an analyst at Fundación Libertad y Desarrollo, commented that the legal scenario reflected in the 2023 elections is similar to that of 2019.
“In a similar way to 2019, the great doubt or characteristic has been the prosecution of some candidacies and the disqualification of some candidates, this has been the important note,” he said.
But there are some factors that differentiate this electoral event and the previous one, Ortiz said. “Perhaps the difference with 2019 may be that the different bodies had uniform criteria, now we have seen in the refusal of registrations volatile and erratic criteria that have marked this choice.”
Arbitrary decisions?
In these general elections, according to the opinion of Renzo Rosal, an independent political analyst, an unusual phenomenon has been seen among the institutions that are directly and indirectly related to the elections.
“Before we talked about doubts about the financing of political parties, but now we are also talking about discretionary decisions, almost arbitrary to leave certain candidates in and leave out some who are seen as politically inconvenient,” he said.
For the expert, this scenario had not been recorded and he is concerned about the way in which apparently arbitrary decisions have been gaining ground in decisions that have to strengthen democracy.
“I think this event has been marked by broad and profound questions, that I can never remember in the political history of this country there had been an election with so many stains, with so many signals and decisions,” he said.
Applications and purchases
Along with the judicialization that experts visualize of the current election process, there are a series of factors that come to add to the panorama, according to Jahir Dabroy, from the Association for Research and Social Studies (Asies).
“There have been several things, on the one hand, we have had candidacies that have been questioned; We all know about the decisions that the justice bodies have taken to not allow certain spaces for candidacies ”, he indicated.
But the analyst considers that society has been key to the current process, since it has been possible for the electoral body to reconsider some decisions, precisely purchases of technological systems that aroused doubts and uncertainty before and during the electoral period.
“The other aspect that also drew attention was the whole issue related to the contracting of certain services, in this case to the systems linked to information technology by the TSE, where the role of citizens has also been relevant to seek a process negotiation,” he said.
Without slowing down the process
Despite the fact that there is a considerable number of protections, these are not an impediment for the general elections to be held on June 25, as the TSE magistrates have reiterated on multiple occasions.
Rafael Rojas, a TSE magistrate, stressed that they are aware of legal actions that have not been resolved, and they recognize that the challenge processes are allowed during the electoral process.
“Each person or political party that has promoted any candidacy registration has raised the resources established by law, particularly with amparo actions, but we as a court are waiting for some resolutions,” he reaffirmed.
But it was also clear that there is nothing that prevents continuing with the programming of the elections, where the printing of ballots is only a few days away from completion, they must reach the electoral authorities, at the latest, on June 13th.
“This does not prevent the printing of ballots from being carried out because there is a provision issued by the Plenary, in which if some provisional protection has not been granted to the situation of each of the candidates, we are waiting for some resolutions but it does not impede the schedule for printing ballots,” the magistrate concluded.
