What good's a divorce if you can't become president?

Increased security around the TSE

On Wednesday, Guatemalan electoral authorities rejected Sandra Torres's presidential candidacy on the grounds of "supposed legal fraud." The TSE's resolution said that her divorce from President Alvaro Colom did not invalidate Article 186 barring relatives of previous presidents from becoming president. 

The resolution also claimed that her candidacy was denied based on the grounds of legal fraud (Article 4 of the Judiciary Act) because the divorce was sought solely to get around the constitutional prohibition of Article 186 (Prensa Libre). The TSE must resolve Torres and UNE's appeal within the next seventy-two hours and then the case will most likely move to the Constitutional Court for a final decision. 

BBCAs I said in April, there didn't really seem to be any good reason why the country's courts would not grant the Colom's their divorce. However, having the electoral authorities accept the divorce and allow her to run for the presidency was going to be another matter.

Then there's the question of what to do if Torres' candidacy is rejected again by the TSE and then finally by the Constitutional Court. Congressman Christian Boussinot (UNE) 

acknowledged that Colom's ruling National Unity of Hope party lacked a viable candidate to stand in the September 11 elections.

"We do not have a Plan B," he said, noting the party's executive committee planned to appeal the ruling. (AFP)

A few months ago I argued that Sandra Torres and Alvaro Colom's decision to divorce so that she can run for president is another example of the weakness of Guatemala's political parties. UNE's been around for a decade and is one of the larger party's in the congress yet it couldn't come up with a candidate that did not confront constitutional barriers to office. 

That's still the case and is made worse by the fact that even though there was a very good likelihood that Torres wouldn't be allowed to run for office, they hadn't thought through a Plan B. On the other hand, it's possible that Boussinot's statement was just for public consumption.

I also guessed that Torres' support would drop below 10% following her announcement that she was going to divorce her husband in order to marry her country. She's sitting at 15% right now so I am in a little trouble there.Perhaps the TSE's ruling is good news for Torres and UNE. She won't have to run and lose in embarrassing fashion to General Otto Perez Molina and UNE has the ability to select a candidate who, while he or she won't win this year, will have some name recognition for 2015.