After a campaign disrupted by various legal proceedings against him, center-left candidate Bernardo Arevalo was elected president of Guatemala with 59% of the vote on Sunday, August 20, ending 12 years of right-wing rule. Following a second round of voting that took place without "significant incident," the Supreme Electoral Tribunal noted a "historic percentage of participation." Arevalo's victory was declared even though not all the votes had yet been counted, with an "extremely important trend" emerging from the first partial results.
Arevalo follows in the footsteps of his father, Juan José Arevalo, Guatemala's first democratically elected president, in office between 1945 and 1951. Arevalo senior was forced into exile after the coup organized by the CIA in 1954. As a result, his son was born in Uruguay, not Guatemala, which was one of the reasons for the many attacks against him during the campaign.
At 64, this sociologist and former diplomat represented hope in the face of the corruption that plagues the country, with 59% of the Guatemalan population living below the poverty line, according to the World Bank. During his campaign, Arevalo had called for this corruption to be "defeated" using chess as a model. "The corrupt are no fools (...) They have learned so well how to place their pawns that they have managed to control all the institutions of the state," he commented. The outgoing president, Alejandro Giammattei (right), has largely contributed to the deterioration of the situation. Some magistrates are still in office today, even though they should have left office four years ago.
Arevalo had surprised in the first round of voting by clinching second place, behind another candidate from the center-left but who campaigned with conservative proposals, Sandra Torres, even though the polls had him in eighth place. The right then lined up behind Torres, leader of the National Unity of Hope party. The ex-wife of former president Alvaro Colom (2008-2012) is an experienced politician and unsuccessful finalist in 2015 and 2019. She had been prosecuted for illegal financing of her 2015 campaign, before having the proceedings annulled. While focusing her election rhetoric on the fight against criminal gangs, she stepped up her attacks on her opponent, his place of birth and his supposed "radicalism."
Between the two rounds, Arevalo's party was the object of legal proceedings. A judge ordered the suspension of its Semilla ("seed") movement, citing irregularities in its creation in 2017. The Constitutional Court and then the Supreme Court overturned this decision.
You have 14.04% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.