Global Courant
In an electoral process riddled with discretion and relativism, of unsuitable candidates whose nomination obviously should have been refused but continue to participate, of negligence by registry officials, of attempts to deny access to meetings with prosecutors, and of legal injunctions —or injunctions— that aggravate Uncertainty, Guatemalan citizens continue to be the best and only bastion of dignity that remains from the electoral process, in two ways: attendance at the polls and volunteering at the polling stations and the boards in charge of voting centers, municipal electoral boards and departmental electoral boards.
At the beginning of last November, the attempt to change the method of entering the results of the polling station records was halted. They had considered sending them to a computer center so that the data could be entered there, which generated rejection, since the reliable method has been that each table closes its physical record, the data is transmitted and it is digitized, which is compared with the original, subsequently sent to the TSE to confirm data.
In this process there is also a third form of citizen participation, through the party polling station prosecutors, whose function is to witness and audit all the actions of the vote-receiving board, including the vote count, with the possibility of file challenges. The results of each table are signed by the members of the table, but also by the prosecutors present, a triple filter that can sometimes delay the comparison and officialization, but whose observations are always noted for later review, in order to be confirmed or discarded.
More than 10,000 members of vote-receiving boards, 350 supervisors and 123 coordinators were sworn in yesterday by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. They are citizens of all ages, but it should be noted that there are many young people involved in this public service, which requires time for training and total dedication during the weekend of election day. Long before the sun rises, these citizens are already in the voting centers.
This year, 2023, marked the 40th anniversary of the promulgation of the Organic Law of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the Law on the Registry of Citizens and the Law on Political Organizations, which continue to be pillars of the democratic process. The current elections are being held under an Electoral Law that was clumsily reformed in 2016, something that must be addressed and corrected by the next congress, to make it less lax for the parties in terms of their financing and the possibility of participating in the public debate under the protection of freedom of expression.
However, beyond the political demagoguery, the party short-termism, the electronic system acquired to transmit the data or the deficiencies, relativisms or conflicts of interest of the current TSE managers, next June 25 there will be tens of thousands of citizens in charge of cross-custody of the votes of more than nine million compatriots. The only thing missing is a reflective, critical, responsible and, above all, free exercise of suffrage, which has been, is and must remain secret.
