Thelma Aldana, exfiscal General y candidata presidencial proclamada por el Movimiento Semilla. (Foto Prensa Libre: Hemeroteca PL)

La resolución de los magistrados electorales se conoció pasado el mediodía de este 1 de abril. Sin embargo, las partes involucradas aún no han sido notificadas.

La votación fue por mayoría, 4-1, según se pudo conocer. La magistrada María Eugenia Mijangos fue quien voto en contra y además razonó su voto.

Los recursos de nulidad contra la inscripción fueron presentados por Emerson García y Byron Rodríguez, de la agrupación política Todos, y uno por Andrés Ayau, del Partido Liberal de Guatemala.

Para conocer argumentos, el TSE había solicitado información respecto de Aldana al Ministerio Público (MP), Contraloría General de Cuentas (CGC), Corte de Constitucionalidad (CC) y al Juzgado Décimo de Primera Instancia Penal.

Lea también: Ministerio de Gobernación presume que Thelma Aldana está en El Salvador

Esto fue lo que informaron las instituciones:

El Juzgado Décimo detalló que el proceso está en reserva, por lo que no podía informar nada.

El Ministerio Público reportó que Aldana tiene vigente una orden de captura por la contratación irregular del abogado Gustavo Bonilla en 2014.

La Corte de Constitucionalidad indicó que dio con lugar un ocurso en queja otorgado a la Procuraduría General de la Nación, que resultó que se suspendiera el amparo otorgado por el Juzgado Primero Civil a Aldana para que no fuese investigada, por la supuesta plaza fantasma como consultor de José Carlos Marroquín.

Mientras tanto, la Contraloría indicó que, debido a que fue suspendido el amparo otorgado a la exfiscal, el finiquito ya no tenía validez y ella puede ser investigada por el Ministerio Público. Auditores de la Contraloría la habían denunciado en diciembre del año pasado por la supuesta plaza fantasma de Marroquín, por considerar que nunca llegó a trabajar y se desconoce qué pasó con los manuales entregados como resultado de la contratación.

Por aparte, la supuesta contratación irregular de Gustavo Bonilla como capacitador en el MP durante la gestión de Aldana, es por la que tiene orden de captura vigente y, ante ese escenario, Aldana ha optado por permanecer en El Salvador.

Si bien el TSE rechazó la inscripción, a la candidata y al Movimiento Semilla le quedan otras instancias, como el amparo -provisional o definitivo- en la Corte Suprema de Justicia (CSJ), para conseguir la inscripción. Si esa no fuera favorable, todavía le queda la apelación ante la Corte de Constitucionalidad (CC) tanto en amparo -provisional o definitivo-.

Mientras que Thelma Aldana en su cuenta de Twitter dijo: “A todos los guatemaltecos, a los decentes, les insto a continuar resistiendo el embate del #PactoDeCorruptos. Llegaremos hasta la Corte de Constitucionalidad para que prevalezca nuestro derecho a elegir y ser electos”.

A todos los guatemaltecos, a los decentes, les insto a continuar resistiendo el embate del #PactoDeCorruptos. Llegaremos hasta la Corte de Constitucionalidad para que prevalezca nuestro derecho a elegir y ser electos — Thelma Aldana (@ThelmaAldana) April 1, 2019

Lea también: Partidos se resisten a entregar informes financieros al TSE

Samuel Pérez, secretario general del partido Movimiento Semilla, dijo en un Facebook Live del Movimiento Semilla: “Hay un temor a Thelma Aldana como presidenta porque Guatemala pasaría de un Estado capturado por un sistema de corrupción que ya se quitó las máscaras y tiene miedo a un eventual gobierno de Semilla porque tenemos el proyecto político, el plan, la convicción y las personas para rescatar el Estado, reconstruir las instituciones y responder a la población”.

Con la resolución del TSE, la exfiscal Aldana no posee inmunidad y al momento de ingresar al país podría ser capturada. Mientras no quede en firme su inscripción, Aldana no puede hacer propaganda electoral, incluida la que paga el Tribunal en diferentes medios de comunicación.

La resolución y el voto razonado de Mijangos

Contenido relacionado

> PGN demanda que la CC rechace la apelación al amparo de Thelma Aldana

> Partidos piden trato igualitario, ante la “inscripción exprés” de Thelma Aldana

> Qué compromisos tenía Gustavo Bonilla en el contrato por el cual Thelma Aldana tiene orden de captura</s>Guatemala City - Guatemala's elections are just two and a half months away, but whether the leading presidential contenders will end up on the ballot, disqualified, or even behind bars is still up in the air.

"There is so much uncertainty," Iduvina Hernandez Batres, the director of the Association for the Study and Promotion of Security in Democracy, told Al Jazeera.

"Two weeks after the campaign began, at this stage there is no clarity as to who overall will be candidates for the presidency," she said.

The official campaign period for the June 16 general elections kicked off on March 18. Of the 27 political parties in the Central American nation, 24 declared presidential candidates. An August 11 presidential runoff is expected.

The three individuals expected to lead the presidential race are the runner-up from the previous election, a former attorney general, and the daughter of an ex-dictator who stood trial for genocide. But all three are mired in controversy and legal battles that could exclude them from the ballot.

On Monday, the electoral tribunal ruled to annul the registration of former Attorney General and Semilla party presidential hopeful Thelma Aldana as a candidate, upholding challenges by political rivals. The major setback comes on the heels of a warrant for Aldana's arrest.

"We now understand how powerful the weight of a whole system can be when it colludes to block someone's participation," Semilla party deputy secretary Ligia Hernandez Gomez told Al Jazeera.

"There is a clear intent by political parties to prevent participation," she said.

'Nearly everyone is trying to stop Aldana from running'

During her 2014-2018 tenure as attorney general, Aldana played a pivotal role in the prosecution of high-level government officials for corruption. In 2015, then-President Otto Perez Molina was forced to resign and was arrested, as were the vice president and the heads of several government ministries.

Working closely with the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), Aldana's office began investigating current President Jimmy Morales, his relatives and the ruling party. They deny all wrongdoings.

Semilla has its roots in mass protests against political corruption that precipitated the fall of the Perez Molina administration. Focused on building more participatory and inclusive democracy, the Semilla party is generally centre-left, but its clear position against corruption draws a broader spectrum of supporters. Aldana identifies herself as right-wing.

On March 17, the electoral tribunal registered Aldana as Semilla's presidential candidate. A judge had issued a warrant for her arrest the day before.

Aldana was in El Salvador at the time and has not yet returned. She is accused of embezzlement and falsification of information on public documents in connection with a contract for training services that were allegedly never rendered.

By law, from the moment candidates are registered they have immunity from prosecution and arrest that can only be stripped through special proceedings. But despite Aldana's initial registration, officials stated that immunity would only come after legal challenges were resolved and that the warrant remained in effect.

The electoral tribunal annulled Aldana's candidacy on Monday, determining that a required document from the comptroller's office was no longer valid. The Semilla party's plan to appeal the ruling is well under way.

"We had foreseen that this could happen," said Hernandez Gomez. "We have all faced so much pressure, both the institutions in charge of resolving the issue and us as party members."

Leopoldo Garcia, an electoral tribunal official, came forward publicly on March 20 and told reporters he had been under intense pressure to not register Semilla as a party or Aldana as a candidate. Last week, he held a press conference to denounce subsequent threats to himself and his family from far-right groups and said he would request precautionary measures from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

"We have nearly everyone trying to stop the participation of Thelma Aldana," said Hernandez Batres.

Semilla now has five days to file a motion with the Supreme Court for a review and reversal of the electoral tribunal's decision. Should that fail, the only remaining option will be an appeal to the Constitutional Court.

Other candidates facing eligibility challenges

Aldana's is not the only candidacy embroiled in court proceedings. The eligibility of Zury Rios, the right-wing Valor party's presidential candidate, will soon be the subject of a final Constitutional Court ruling.

Rios is the daughter of Efrain Rios Montt, a former military ruler who was convicted of genocide in 2013 but then died last year before his partial retrial concluded. More than 80 percent of the estimated 200,000 people killed during a 36-year civil war between the army and leftists rebels were indigenous Maya.

Rios Montt took office in 1982 in a military coup. The Guatemalan constitution prohibits anyone who took power by force from running for president, but the constitutional ban also extends to relatives up to the fourth degree of consanguinity.

Despite the ban, Rios was registered as a candidate and her eligibility has been in dispute, with the Supreme Court ruling she can run and the Constitutional Court ruling she cannot. There is only one ruling left and the Constitutional Court has the final say, but there is no guarantee Rios will respect it.

"What we will probably see is the Constitutional Court rule definitively in favour of the motion of the election tribunal to prohibit her from participating, and she will probably end up defying the resolution of the Constitutional Court, engendering an element of chaos," said Hernandez Batres.

The candidacy of Sandra Torres, the candidate of National Unity of Hope (UNE) party expected to lead the race for president, is currently not the subject of a legal battle but she may end up in court anyway.

Torres first attempted to run for president in 2011 at the end of her husband Alvaro Colom's term in office. Despite their divorce to circumvent a constitutional ban on a sitting president's relatives from running for office, the Constitutional Court nixed her candidacy. In 2015, she ran but lost to Morales in the second-round runoff vote.

The UNE was founded as a social-democratic party, but as investigations into government corruption broadened, it has recently occasionally aligned itself with the ruling party and others in Congress. The alliance has been popularly dubbed the "Pact of the Corrupt", accused of conspiring to mutually safeguard immunity from prosecution.

Torres and the UNE now face the same scandal Morales and the ruling FCN party have - alleged illegal campaign financing in 2015. Charges were filed shortly after Torres was registered as a candidate, which granted her immunity from prosecution, and the Supreme Court upheld that immunity.

Last week, however, Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre leaked an audio recording in which Torres appears to be discussing several million dollars in unreported campaign financing. Prosecutors have since filed a motion with the Constitutional Court in another attempt to strip Torres of her immunity from prosecution. The UNE responded by accusing prosecutors of leaking the audio.

Atypical process

In the end, the fates of all three top presidential contenders could be determined by the country's highest court. But two weeks into the campaign, uncertainty persists.

Many aspects of the current election process are atypical, said Hernandez Batres. The campaign period is extra short. The top presidential contenders are women. They all face court proceedings that could take them out of the running. There is a new election law with more restrictions on campaign financing.

Even the very first act was unusual, Hernandez Batres added. Ever since the transition from military rule to elections in 1985, the official call for elections is a solemn act, with the heads of all three branches of government in attendance in a show of support for the electoral tribunal and process, she told Al Jazeera.

"This year, for the first time, the electoral tribunal was alone. The executive branch president did not show up, nor did the president of the legislative branch or that of the judicial branch. The Constitutional Court was not there. The heads of the main political parties were not there," she said.

"It is as though they are preparing to claim fraud if the results are not in their favour," said Hernandez Batres.

Jorge Santos, the director of UDEFEGUA, a national human rights organisation, is also concerned that a stage is being set to control the process and results. Santos views the massive uncertainty as to who will be able to participate as candidates this late in the game as telling.

"It calls into question the legitimacy of a process that from the beginning has been plagued by vicissitudes," he said.

President Morales and some candidates have made public remarks questioning the role, capacity and legitimacy of the electoral tribunal and the courts that play key roles in determining election candidates and results, Santos noted.

"It would appear that there is an explicit intention by the Pact of the Corrupt not to permit an election scenario in which they will not win," he said.

Attention remains largely focused on the presidential race and the legal battles of the frontrunners, but at the local level, municipal race candidates are being killed. Political violence has marked past election periods and online hate speech, attacks and other incidents all indicate this year will be no different, said Santos.

Two mayoral candidates from the Fuerza party were murdered in February, and a local candidate from the People's Liberation Movement party was murdered last month.</s>Guatemala's top electoral court has accepted three challenges to the presidential candidacy of former chief prosecutor Thelma Aldana, at least temporarily leaving her outside the race.

Jorge Mario Valenzuela, one of the Supreme Electoral Court judges who voted against Aldana, says one of the challenges alleged that Aldana did not have a certification from the comptroller's office indicating that her public accounts were all settled. The certificate is a requirement of candidates.

When Aldana registered her candidacy she had the certificate, but when the court later asked the comptroller it was told the document was expired.

Aldana could still appeal the decision. The challenges were brought by political rivals.</s>GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Guatemala’s former attorney general Thelma Aldana will seek to overturn a decision from the country’s top elections authority that would prevent the anti-corruption crusader from running for president, a top aide said on Tuesday.

A little over two months from the June vote, the electoral court rejected Aldana’s candidacy in a decision announced on Monday that cited an arrest warrant issued against her, which alleged irregularities during her tenure as chief prosecutor.

The electoral court case against Aldana, who served as attorney general from 2014 to 2018, was pursued by her political opponents.

Among the presidential front-runners in recent polls, Aldana has denied the charges and dismissed them as politically motivated.

“Why are there so many attacks? Because she represents a serious threat to the various economic, political and illicit interests that operate in the country,” Rotman Perez, Aldana’s campaign manager, told Reuters.

Perez said Aldana will opt for one of two options: ask the country’s Supreme Court to reinstate her on the ballot or seek an appeal with the Constitutional Court, Guatemala’s top judicial body.

He did not say when the presidential hopeful would make her next move.

Aldana, 63, leads the left-of-center Seed Movement party and is currently in neighboring El Salvador due to what she has described as political persecution.

Aldana led the field of presidential candidates with 28 percent ahead of the June 16 election in a recent Mitofsky poll, outpacing Zury Rios, the daughter of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, and former First Lady Sandra Torres.

During her tenure as Guatemala’s top law enforcement official, Aldana helped uncover corruption cases that led to the conviction and imprisonment of ex-President Otto Perez.

She has also been a vocal supporter of the U.N.-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, or CICIG.

Current President Jimmy Morales, who has been a target of CICIG investigators, has ordered the body to end its work and leave the country.
The Supreme Electoral Tribunal accepts the nullity recourses against the candidacy of Thelma Aldana and temporarily leaves her out of the general elections. However, an appeal will be filed before the Supreme Court of Justice and ultimately, the Constitutional Court. All three top candidates face serious legal challenges that may prevent them from running.