And going back now to Guatemala City - on Monday, the press spoke with Luis Gerardo Ortiz, the spokesperson for the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. That's the Guatemalan version of the Election and Boundaries office and they ran the Guatemalan referendum earlier this year.
They also managed the public awareness campaign - which - at the official level - did not tell voters to day yes or no to the ICJ, it just told them to go and vote. Indeed, Belize has that campaign, plus it has a strong "no to the ICJ" campaign, and it also has those campaigning for a yes vote. Interestingly though, in Guatemala there was no push for a "no" vote. He also added that the political parties were not involved:
Luis Gerardo Rarmirez Ortiz- Spokes Person, Supreme Electoral Tribunal
"It must be mentioned that in electoral periods it is very common to have political parties trying to influence the votes or buy the peoples votes via presents or raffles or even the payment for the same, which is penalized by the law. In this case, in the referendum, it has to be mentioned that there were no political parties. That gives it more legitimacy because it was the pure expression of the people without any incentives to have them come up to the polling stations."
Reporter
"Were there people that were pushing for a yes or no vote?"
Luis Gerardo Rarmirez Ortiz
"In the case of a no vote, we don't have knowledge if there was a push for a no vote. In the case of a yes vote there were groups in the society that effectively were engaged in campaigns in favor of a yes vote."
The Guatemalan congress had allocated $300 million quetzales, approximately $39 million USD for the referendum process, which included costs of logistics and education campaigns. According to ORTIZ, only about half of it was spent.
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