GUATEMALA CITY, Sept 15 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A politician from the party of Guatemala’s president-elect was shot dead on Thursday near the border with Mexico, the party and local media said.
Anibal Ramirez, a former candidate in the western town of San Pedro Necta for president-elect Bernardo Arevalo’s Semilla (Seed) party, was killed in a roadway attack there, according to local media reports.
Ramirez’s wife Mercy Morales, who was with him in a pick-up truck, was also killed in the attack, party leaders confirmed.
“Anibal was a citizen committed to transforming his community, always using his voice to denounce corruption. Today, the damned violence took the lives of him and his wife Mercy,” Semilla deputy Ligia Hernandez wrote on social media platform X.
The party demanded those responsible for the killings be brought to justice, she added.
Since Arevalo unexpectedly won a presidential runoff election last month, Guatemalan authorities have repeatedly used legal means to act against him and his party.
Semilla is under investigation by the public prosecutor’s office, led by Attorney General Consuelo Porras, for alleged registration irregularities.
Arevalo has described the investigation led by prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche as part of an ongoing “coup d’etat” to prevent him from taking office in January.
Porras and Curruchiche are both on a US list of “corrupt actors.”
The United States and the Organization of American States have rejected the prosecutors’ actions against Semilla as anti-democratic.
