Guatemala Sets Lineup For Presidential Vote As Critics Slam Disqualifications
By Andrés Fuentes
By Sofia Menchu
03/27/23 AT 7:06 PM EDT
Guatemala's presidential race kicked off on Monday, a day after the electoral authority finalized its approved candidate lineup for the June election, even as critics blasted decisions to disqualify some candidates while allowing others to run.
Polls point to two conservative women as early presidential front-runners.
The Sunday registry of candidacies by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) launched the three-month campaign to succeed conservative President Alejandro Giammattei, who is prohibited by law from seeking a second term, as well as for seats in Congress and mayor's races across Central America's most populous country and biggest economy.
The TSE has come under sharp criticism for allowing aspirants implicated in corruption to run, at a time when Giammattei and his allies face mounting accusations of dismantling anticorruption efforts via arrests of judges and prosecutors.
One of the leading presidential hopefuls is Zury Rios, a 55-year-old conservative former congresswoman who was banned from participating in the previous election due to the country's constitutional prohibition on children of ex-dictators as candidates. But this time the TSE is allowing her to run.
More:
https://www.ibtimes.com/guatemala-sets-lineup-presidential-vote-critics-slam-disqualifications-3680825
Zury Rios' father, the fascist dictator, evangelical preacher, and personal friend of Ronald Reagan, was finally brought to trial for genocide, found guilty, had a court call for a retrial, and allegedly died before he could be retried, just as fellow bloody right-winger Pinochet died before he could be sentenced, etc.
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How Ronald Reagan Made Genocide Possible in Guatemala
by Benjy Hansen-Bundy
April 15, 2013
Efrain Rios Montt, who ruthlessly ruled Guatemala in the early 1980s, is currently standing trial for genocide. The burden of justice and nation healing falls on the Guatemalan people: it is their dictator who stands trial and their people who suffered under him. But Americans (and Guatemalans) ought to remember that Rios Montt had big friends in Washington. President Bill Clinton apologized in 1999, saying that the U.S. support for the death squads "was wrong."
April 17, 2013 Benjy Hansen-Bundy, Robert Parry
Efrain Rios Montt, who ruthlessly ruled Guatemala in the early 1980s, is currently standing trial in his home country for the genocide of 1,771 indigenous people. This constitutes a monumental step forward for human rights in Latin America.
What the mainstream media skates over in its coverage of the Rios Montt trial is the hand Ronald Reagan had in getting the genocidal ball rolling.
The early 1980s were particularly violent in the Latin American theater of the Cold War. Smack in the middle of Guatemala's 36-year civil war which claimed 200,000 lives, Rios Montt edged out the winner of a sham election in a bloodless coup and began systematically repressing support for the Marxist opposition, as his forces raped women, burned villages, and murdered indigenous Mayan peasants.
From day one Reagan backed Rios Montt, feeding him millions first in jeeps and trucks, and then helicopter and plane parts, despite clearly articulated reports from both the CIA and international watchdogs that genocide was accumulating bodies in the ditches and gullies of Guatemala.
A cache of internal Guatemalan records from the time revealed the existence of Operation Sofia, which was the operation that led to the massacre of indigenous peasants. It was used by the 1999 UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission to classify the counterinsurgency campaign in the summer of 1982 as "acts of genocide against groups of Mayan people."
The horror described by independent human rights reporters on the ground is enough to turn your stomach: "We heard many, many stories of children being picked up by the ankles and swung against poles so their heads [were] destroyed."
More:
https://portside.org/2013-04-17/how-ronald-reagan-made-genocide-possible-guatemala#1
