Global Courant
Due to deletions in the tally sheets and apparent errors in the sum of votes, 15 political parties will request a recount of the tally sheets of the presidential candidate from the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, according to a group of prosecutors announced during the review hearing of the JED of Guatemala .
Different political parties stated that the minutes detailing the number of votes show inconsistencies that prevent them from fully trusting the data.
In this act, 199 voters are detailed, where Movimiento Semilla was credited with 467 votes and a total of 995 votes. Photography: Free Press (Elmer Vargas).
“They make tests that are completely crossed out, and in others we have found that they assign an organization a greater number of votes in favor and no save appears,” explained Héctor Aldana, national prosecutor of Vamos, along with other prosecutors from different political parties. .
The studs are other aspects that prosecutors have doubts about. Photography: Free Press (Elmer Vargas).
He gave an example of the case of table 2430, in Chinautla: “247 people voted here and now it turns out that a certain political organization has 269 votes in favor.” The ballot to which Aldana was referring details that those apparent extra votes were added to the presidential binomial of Movimiento Semilla.
Prosecutors took the physical records, which in their opinion evidence errors that favored a party. Photography: Free Press (Elmer Vargas)
For the group of prosecutors, who were represented by Aldana in an impromptu press conference, the number of votes in doubt is considerable. “This situation worries us, because only the department of Guatemala represents 22 percent of the electoral roll,” added Aldana.
This Wednesday, TSE authorities explained that there is no figure for counting votes, but prosecutors point out that in the 2019 elections there was already a precedent.
“Four years ago a process of this nature was carried out, more than the electoral issue, it is the purity of the process,” emphasized the Vamos prosecutor, who pointed out that the written petition will be presented between today and tomorrow.
Along with the formal petition, the group of prosecutors is considering filing complaints against the members of the JED of Guatemala and the Central District (JEDC), since they consider that the alternate system of vote counting could have caused the alleged errors.
critics
During the review hearing that took place in the Parque de la Industria, no challenge was ratified, because the prosecutors abandoned the hearing and assured that the JED of Guatemala did not take into account the petition that they formulated as a bloc.
While they were at the hearing, the groups’ doubts centered on the Sega system, the alternate tool for counting votes, and the apparently wrong erasures and sums on the tally sheets.
“People came to the polls with confidence in the Vote Receiving Boards (JRV), but they did not give certainty to the electoral process,” questioned César Romano, prosecutor of the National Unity of Hope (UNE).
Due to the doubts that are heard about the process, William Rivera, Cabal’s prosecutor, also supported the proposal to recount the tally sheets: “it is necessary to count everything again to be able to establish the data that could be wrong, considering that form number five, in many times, they did not give it to us”.
The prosecutors stated in the short time that they remained in the hearing that the recent events caused them doubts, because “it did not develop in a good way, from beginning to end it has been a fraudulent process,” said Carlos Vidal, Todos prosecutor.
Transfer request
Álvaro Bravo, president of the JED of Guatemala, explained that since neither party ratified the challenges, they only have to hold another hearing to address the specific case of San José del Golfo and Chinautla.
In the first municipality it was not possible to hold the voting, and in the second the Electoral Board requested to annul the voting due to the conflicts generated after the elections.
If there are no challenges, the legal procedures will proceed to transfer the official data to the TSE for the adjudication of charges, said Bravo, accompanied by the other members of the board.
Before the announcement of the group of prosecutors, Bravo considers that the representatives of political parties may be confusing the issues, since the Sega system operated well.
“I think there is a confusion, because they ask us questions that do not correspond to our task, so please keep that in mind, we are two different operations with two different needs,” said the president of the Guatemalan Board.
For Bravo, the parties would have confused part of the procedure: “they talked about the system, but they had papers in their hands, which are the minutes, they are the copies that correspond to them, there is no system thing and ballots,” he concluded.
Finally, the JED of Guatemala agreed that it will transfer to the plenary session of the TSE the request of the majority of prosecutors, which is a recount of the minutes for the election of the presidential candidate. As detailed by its Social Communication department, yesterday they delivered the request to the TSE.
The parties
There are 15 groups that would agree with the vote count:
Come on All Value UNE Viva Creo Cabal Change Power Popular Party Vos URNG FCN Nation Republican Union Republican Party
