Two days earlier than Guatemala’s presidential runoff election, the Supreme Court docket of Justice granted a everlasting injunction Friday to the social gathering of progressive candidate Bernardo Arévalo, blocking a decrease courtroom’s order suspending the social gathering’s authorized standing.
Court docket spokesman Rudy Esquivel mentioned it ordered the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to ignore the decrease courtroom’s ruling, which got here final month on the request of prosecutors who mentioned they had been investigating how the social gathering had gathered the mandatory signatures to register years earlier.
The excessive courtroom had earlier blocked the suspension with a brief injunction on the request of Arévalo’s Seed Motion.
The brand new ruling might be appealed to Guatemala’s highest tribunal, the Constitutional Court docket.
Guatemalan electoral legislation forbids the suspension of a celebration through the electoral course of. The unique suspension was granted after the primary spherical of voting June 25 wherein Arévalo gained a spot in Sunday’s runoff in opposition to former first woman Sandra Torres.
The Legal professional Basic’s Workplace investigation of the Seed Motion was introduced simply earlier than the primary spherical outcomes had been licensed in July. Federal brokers have raided the places of work of electoral authorities and the political social gathering, carting off containers of paperwork and issuing arrest orders.
Prosecutors allege that a number of the signatures submitted by the social gathering had been fictitious or belonged to useless folks.
Arévalo has dismissed the investigation as politically motivated and aimed toward conserving him out of the competitors.
Current opinion polls have given him a large lead over the conservative Torres, who’s making her third bid for the presidency.
Torres has used the investigation to assault Arévalo. On Friday at her marketing campaign’s closing occasion within the capital she instructed supporters that the Seed Motion was making an attempt to steal the election.