<\/p>\n
Guatemala\u2019s Congress, which is controlled by the currently governing party, on Wednesday refused to recognize the seven lawmakers from the Seed Movement party of President-elect Bernardo Ar\u00e9valo, following the suspension of his party<\/a><\/span> earlier this week.<\/p>\n Lawmakers declared their Seed Movement colleagues independents in the latest move against the party since Ar\u00e9valo\u2019s landslide win Aug. 20<\/a><\/span>. Prosecutors have accused the Seed Movement of wrongdoing in gathering signatures for the party\u2019s registration years earlier. The case was announced in July after Ar\u00e9valo won a surprise place in the presidential runoff against former first lady Sandra Torres<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n Anti-corruption prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche officially advised the Congress of the party\u2019s suspension despite pending court appeals. The U.S. government has sanctioned Curruchiche for allegedly obstructing corruption investigations.<\/p>\n Wednesday was the Congress\u2019 first session after a two-month recess. Ar\u00e9valo is among the seven lawmakers declared independents and he was present at the session Wednesday.<\/p>\n At a news conference later, the Seed Movement said it was the victim of a government conspiracy and would seek an injunction blocking Congress\u2019 move. It said it would also file a complaint with the legislature\u2019s leaders.<\/p>\n \u201cIn recent days we have witnessed the systematic articulation of actions aimed at the disappearance of the Seed Movement, at the same time cancelling the support of the Guatemalan people at the ballot box who expressed an emphatic \u2018no\u2019 to corruption,\u201d said party lawmaker Samuel P\u00e9rez.<\/p>\n Seed Movement legislator Rom\u00e1n Castellanos said the impact is that Seed Movement lawmakers cannot hold leadership positions in the Congress. They also lose the presidency of the sole congressional committee they held, he said.<\/p>\n The body acted differently in the case of another party, the National Change Union, months earlier when its party status was cancelled by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. The party allied with the governing party of President Alejandro Giammattei did not have its lawmakers declared independents or stripped of their committee leadership positions.<\/p>\n Ar\u00e9valo\u2019s win is worrying to entrenched powers because he has promised to re-start the campaign against corruption.<\/p>\n – Sonia P\u00e9rez D., AP News<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Guatemala\u2019s Congress, which is controlled by the currently governing party, on Wednesday refused to recognize the seven lawmakers from the Seed Movement party of President-elect Bernardo Ar\u00e9valo, following the suspension of his party earlier this week. Lawmakers declared their Seed Movement colleagues independents in the latest move against the party since Ar\u00e9valo\u2019s landslide win Aug. 20. Prosecutors have…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":8244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dims.apnews.com\/dims4\/default\/4d65240\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/8640x5760+0+0\/resize\/1440x960!\/format\/webp\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2F6c%2F88%2F57efd274c436d57c2d687a7ffa63%2F754a8ac6e95545079e2c1c4aa1679363","fifu_image_alt":"Guatemala\u2019s Congress Refuses to Recognize President-Elect\u2019s Party","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polity-governance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8243,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8242\/revisions\/8243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}