GUATEMALA CITY, Aug 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Central America’s democratic downswing has received a powerful correction after the centrist anti-corruption crusader Bernardo Arévalo was elected president of Guatemala – a result almost inconceivable just a few weeks ago.
Alongside El Salvador and Nicaragua, Guatemala was one of several Central American countries to have suffered a troubling authoritarian slide in recent years with judges and prosecutors forced into exile and a leading journalist thrown in jail.
The election of Arévalo – the son of Guatemala’s first democratically elected president, Juan José Arévalo – represents a potent repudiation of such democratic erosion and deeply entrenched political corruption in Central America’s most populous nation.
Addressing a press conference after his win, Arévalo celebrated the courage of voters who turned out to “defend democracy” and hand him a landslide victory over the former first lady Sandra Torres. With 100% of votes counted, Arévalo had 58.01% of votes to Torres’s 37.24%.
“Thank you people of Guatemala. This triumph isn’t ours. It belongs to you, who supported us throughout the electoral campaign,” said the president-elect, a former diplomat and sociologist who leads a recently founded party called Movimiento Semilla (Seed Movement). “This victory belongs to the people and now, together, as a people, we will fight against corruption.”
Jubilant Semilla supporters gathered outside the Las Américas hotel in the capital, Guatemala City, where Arévalo was due to speak, blaring horns, waving national flags and cheering. “We have waited for this moment for many years,” said Carlos de León Samayoa, 27, as he celebrated. “I feel pretty emotional.”
Until a few months ago, the idea of an Arévalo presidency seemed far-fetched. The 64-year-old intellectual, who was born in Uruguay after his father was forced into exile by 1954’s CIA-backed coup, narrowly snatched a spot in Sunday’s runoff after claiming second place in June’s first round with 12% of the vote.
“No one saw it coming – not even the leaders of Semilla,” the Latin America specialist Will Freeman wrote last month in a profile of the presidential hopeful in the Americas Quarterly magazine.
Weeks later, in July, the election was thrown into confusion after Guatemala’s top prosecutor unsuccessfully attempted to suspend Arévalo’s party in what was widely seen as a politically motivated attempt to scupper his campaign. However, that move boomeranged, propelling Arévalo’s name further into the headlines and prompting an outpouring of support from across the political spectrum.
On Sunday, Guatemala’s outgoing president, Alejandro Giammattei, offered his congratulations on Twitter, now known as X, and said he had invited Arévalo to the presidential palace to organise “the most orderly and complete transition the country has ever seen”. The new president will take over on Jan 14.
Guatemala’s democratic advance stands in start contrast to the bleak situation in El Salvador and Nicaragua. In the former, the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, has thrown about 1% of his country’s population behind bars as part of a highly controversial “war on gangs” and looks set to secure a second five-year term next year despite that being outlawed by the constitution.
In the latter, the former Sandinista hero Daniel Ortega has ruled continuously since being elected in 2006, and, at 77, shows no sign of stepping down. Ortega recently deported more than 200 political prisoners to the US and stripped them of their citizenship.
“We think it is a disaster,” Guatemala’s new leader said of the situation in Nicaragua while campaigning before Sunday’s vote. “Our foreign policy will be to promote democracy, always, both abroad and at home,” he added.
Beyond his anti-corruption policies, Arévalo has said he wants to expand relations with China alongside Guatemala’s longstanding allegiance with Taiwan. How he plans to do that remains to be seen, given China’s policy that no country it has ties with can maintain separate diplomatic relations with Taipei. — NNN-AGENCIES
