World
Progressive Arevalo leads in poll ahead of Guatemala presidential election
A survey from CID Gallup shows Bernardo Arevalo surging ahead of conservative rival Sandra Torres in the lead-up to Sunday’s vote.
A new public opinion poll released days ahead of Guatemala’s presidential race indicates former dark-horse candidate Bernardo Arevalo is heading into the vote with a healthy lead.
Arevalo, a candidate for the progressive Movimiento Semilla or Seed Movement, is projected to win by 61 percent, according to a survey published on Wednesday by the research firm CID Gallup.
Such a victory would mark a major upset over early frontrunner Sandra Torres, a former first lady representing the conservative party National Unity of Hope (UNE).
Torres and Arevalo are set to go head-to-head in a run-off election on August 20, the culmination of a bumpy presidential race rocked by fears of political interference.
On June 25, Arevalo surprised the political establishment with an unexpectedly strong finish in the first round of voting.
The son of Guatemala’s first democratically elected president and a member of Congress himself, Arevalo scored 11.8 percent of the vote, a total only surpassed by Torres at 15.7 percent. No other candidate polled higher than 8 percent.
That result propelled Arevalo and Torres to Sunday’s run-off. But in the aftermath of Arevalo’s first-round success, rival parties questioned whether the vote tally was accurate, appealing to the court system for a review.
That proceeding ultimately upheld the results — but on the same day that the election tribunal certified the vote, the Attorney General’s Office successfully petitioned a court to suspend Arevalo’s Seed Movement.
Prosecutors claimed that 5,000 signatures used to form the party had been fraudulent.
Legal experts quickly denounced the move as a violation of Guatemalan law, which prohibits suspending a party’s legal status in the midst of an ongoing election. And the country’s Constitutional Court ultimately reversed the lower court’s suspension.
But the Attorney General’s Office has continued to take action against the Seed Movement, ordering police to raid the party’s offices for evidence.
Police raids have also targeted the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the country’s election authority. The tribunal ultimately requested an injunction against the Attorney General’s Office to ensure the election’s integrity.
The Guatemalan government has long contended with allegations of corruption, as prosecutors have pursued prominent journalists, judges, lawyers and public accountability advocates on what critics consider trumped-up charges.
The country’s attorney general, Maria Consuelo Porras, has herself been sanctioned by the United States “due to her involvement in significant corruption”.
“During her tenure, Porras repeatedly obstructed and undermined anticorruption investigations in Guatemala to protect her political allies and gain undue political favour,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
Corruption has emerged as one of the central issues in the 2023 presidential campaign, with Arevalo positioning himself as a champion of the anti-corruption movement.
Torres, meanwhile, has pushed a platform based on greater government transparency. But she too has faced corruption allegations in the past and was briefly arrested in 2019 on suspicion of campaign finance violations. A judge eventually dismissed the case.
Wednesday’s CID Gallup poll found that 52 percent of Guatemalans surveyed were optimistic that the country would improve under his leadership, whereas only 6 percent said the same of Torres.
World
Slovakia PM Robert Fico in ‘very serious’ condition after being shot
Deputy PM Kalinak says Fico is stable post-surgery after being shot five times in an attempted assassination.
Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico is stable but his condition remains “very serious”, his deputy has said, after an assassination attempt that shocked the country and drew global condemnation.
Fico, 59, was shot five times in the central town of Handlova on Wednesday. He was in critical condition and underwent several hours of emergency surgery.
“During the night, doctors managed to stabilise the patient’s condition,” Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinak said on Thursday.
“Unfortunately, the condition is still very serious as the injuries are complicated,” said Kalinak, who is also the defence minister.
A state security council meeting is scheduled for Thursday following the attack. The alleged attacker, a 71-year-old writer, was taken into custody.
Environment Minister Tomas Taraba told the BBC on Thursday that the operation had “gone well”. He said one bullet went through Fico’s stomach, and the second hit a joint during the attack after Fico left a government meeting.
The shooting was “politically motivated”, Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok said on Wednesday.
“This assassination [attempt] was politically motivated, and the perpetrator’s decision was born closely after the presidential election,” Sutaj Estok said, referring to an April election won by Fico’s ally, Peter Pellegrini.
Pellegrini described the attack as an “unprecedented threat to Slovak democracy”.
“If we express other political opinions in squares, and not in polling stations, we are jeopardising everything that we have built together over 31 years of Slovak sovereignty,” Pellegrini said.
Following the attack, Fico was rushed to a hospital in Handlova but was transferred by helicopter to the regional capital, Banska Bystrica, for urgent treatment.
Russia said it considered the attack “absolutely unacceptable”.
“This is really a great tragedy,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
Fico’s European counterparts, including Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, condemned the shooting and wished him a complete recovery.
The country of 5.4 million has seen polarised political debate in recent years, including last year’s presidential election that helped Fico tighten his grip on power.
Since returning as prime minister last October, his government has scaled back support for Ukraine while opening up dialogue with Russia, looked to lessen punishments for corruption, and is revamping the RTVS public broadcaster despite a call to protect media freedoms.
World
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World
Chances of Cyprus peace talks restart look dimmer as Turkish Cypriot leader sees no common ground
Chances of restarting formal talks to mend Cyprus’ decades-long ethnic division appeared dimmer Wednesday as the leader of the breakaway Turkish Cypriots told a U.N. envoy that he saw no common ground with Greek Cypriots for a return to negotiations.
Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar said that he conveyed to the U.N. secretary general’s personal envoy, María Ángela Holguín Cuéllar, that talks can’t happen unless separate Turkish Cypriot sovereignty in the island’s northern third first gains the same international recognition as the Cyprus republic in the Greek Cypriot south.
CYPRUS’ PRESIDENT CALLS ON EU TO TAKE ACTION AGAINST INFLUX OF SYRIAN REFUGEES FROM LEBANON
Tatar was quoted by Turkish Cypriot media as saying that a permanent Turkish military presence coupled with military intervention rights are prerequisites to any peace deal, despite Greek Cypriot attempts to “remove Turkey” from the settlement equation.
Tatar also expressed irritation with Holguín’s contacts with civil society groups that support an accord that would reunify Cyprus as a federation made up of Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot zones, in line with a U.N.-endorsed framework.
The majority of Greek Cypriots reject a deal that would formalize a partition through a two-state deal, the permanent stationing of Turkish troops on the island, the right for Turkey to militarily intervene as well a demand for a Turkish Cypriot veto on all federal-level government decisions.
The Turkish Cypriot leader’s remarks don’t waver from a line that he’s consistently kept since his 2022 rise to power. But the fact that he remains unyielding despite four months of Holguín’s shuttle diplomacy doesn’t bode well for a talks restart.
Holguín was appointed at the start of the year to determine what the chances are of resuming formal talks seven years after the last major push for a deal collapsed amid much acrimony.
An agreement has defied numerous, U.N.-facilitated rounds of talks since 1974 when the island was cleaved along ethnic lines following a Turkish invasion preceded by a coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece. Only Turkey recognizes a Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence, and although Cyprus is a European Union member, only the south enjoys full membership benefits.
Holguín has refrained from speaking at length about her contacts over the last few months, but she noted in an interview with Kathimerini newspaper that it was up to the leaders to “listen to the people” and that she had been surprised at Tatar’s rejection of her proposal for a three-way meeting with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides.
Holguín will “soon” prepare a report for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres about her findings over the last five months, according to U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq.
Christodoulides struck a more upbeat note on Wednesday, saying that efforts for a resumption of talks continue and that time should be given for diplomacy to work.
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