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       GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemala was plunged into a political crisis on Thursday when a court disqualified the party of a maverick anti-corruption candidate just weeks before the presidential election. The U.S. government and Guatemalan political and business leaders warned that the Central American country’s democracy was in peril.

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       Bernardo Arévalo had stunned Guatemalans with his second-place finish in the initial round of voting last month. The candidate, a center-left former diplomat, has campaigned on promises to challenge Guatemala’s deeply corrupt political establishment and bring back reformist judges and prosecutors who have fled the country in recent years.

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       But on Wednesday, a district court suspended his party’s registration, at the request of a prosecutor who has been sanctioned by the U.S. government for allegedly trying to thwart corruption investigations. The prosecutor, Rafael Curruchiche, said there were irregularities in the registration of supporters of the Movimiento Semilla — “Seed Movement” — at its founding in 2019.

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       The move provoked an immediate backlash. The country’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal defied the district court’s order, declaring that Arévalo would go into the runoff on Aug. 20 against former first lady Sandra Torres, the top finisher in last month’s balloting. “If there’s no respect for the vote, there’s no democracy,” the tribunal declared Thursday. It appealed the district court ruling to the country’s Constitutional Court.

       The U.S. government and other international donors, as well as Guatemalan politicians, business leaders and civic groups, protested the order to remove Semilla from the race. Prominent lawyers called it blatantly illegal. Messages circulated on social media calling for protests in Guatemala City. By Thursday afternoon, the Constitutional Court granted a request by Semilla to temporarily block the district court ruling.

       U.S. and European officials warned that striking Arévalo’s party from the ballot could delegitimize the election and set up a constitutional crisis. Such political instability could reverberate well beyond this nation of 17 million; Guatemala is a major source of migrants to the United States as well as a key transshipment point for cocaine from Colombia.

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       “It feels like this either completely breaks the rule of law in Guatemala, or it’s miraculously reaffirmed,” said Eric Olson, director of policy at the Seattle International Foundation. “There’s not a middle ground here.”

       Arévalo also said his party was “moving forward.”

       “We are not going to let ourselves be distracted by these illegal acts,” he said. The Constitutional Court, normally friendly to the establishment, voted 4-1 to grant Semilla’s request for a temporary injunction against the ruling.

       Guatemala’s electoral process this year has been widely criticized. Before the first round of voting, authorities disqualified several candidates who had pledged to shake up a graft-plagued political system penetrated by organized crime groups. A quarter of voters cast blank or null ballots in protest. Still, international electoral observers said the voting June 25 was largely free and fair.

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       Yet challenges to Arévalo’s candidacy quickly appeared. The Constitutional Court ordered an unusual review of tally sheets from polling stations after losing parties complained about the outcome. On Wednesday, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal upheld the results of the first-round vote.

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       By then another challenge had emerged, this time from Curruchiche, head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity.

       He alleged that some of the 25,000 signatures submitted by Semilla in 2019 to form a political party were phony. A district court promptly suspended the party’s legal registration on Wednesday.

       Brian Nichols, the State Department’s top official for Latin America, said late Wednesday that the U.S. government was “deeply concerned” by the prosecuting office’s “threats to Guatemala’s electoral democracy.”

       “Institutions must respect the will of voters,” Nichols tweeted.

       Legal analysts said the court’s decision to suspend Semilla’s legal registration was not based on law.

       “I don’t see any legal basis or precedent” for a district court to take such a decision, said Alexander Aizenstatd, a constitutional lawyer here.

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       District judges have the authority to issue provisional measures to protect evidence or bar a suspect from leaving the country, he said, “but canceling the existence of the political party? There’s no basis for that.”

       Investigators from Curruchiche’s office raided the Supreme Electoral Tribunal’s offices on Thursday, looking for information from voter rolls. The head of the electoral tribunal, Irma Palencia, called the move an “invasion.”

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       In a statement, the tribunal said it “reaffirms our unbreakable commitment to guarantee and defend the vote.”

       President Alejandro Giammattei, who is limited by Guatemala’s constitution to a single term in office, has said the second round of the election will go forward on Aug. 20. He has denied that he is trying to remain in office beyond the end of his mandate in January 2024. Many analysts have accused him of trying to ensure he is succeeded by an ally who won’t open investigations into his government.

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       Guatemala drew international attention for a sweeping anti-corruption campaign that culminated in the resignation in 2015 of a president, Otto Pérez Molina, who was subsequently jailed. But in recent years, authorities have dismantled the U.N.-backed anti-corruption commission that had helped build cases against him and other Guatemalan politicians.

       Prominent anti-corruption judges and prosecutors have fled the country to escape what they call baseless charges filed against them.

       Sheridan reported from Mexico City.

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