Q24N – Bernardo Arévalo and the Semilla Movement won the last elections in Guatemala widely and cleanly. On August 20, in the second electoral round, Arévalo and Semilla achieved 60.90% of the votes, compared to 39.10% for Sandra Torres of the Unidad Nacional de Esperanza party (UNE) – National Unity of Hope party.
In the June legislative elections, two months earlier, Semilla only received 11% of the votes in Congress. Between the official alliance Vamos por una Guatemala Diferente, of the current president Alejandro Giammattei and the right-wing legislator Manuel Conde Orellana, and the UNE of Torres, they obtained about 30% of the legislative power. That advantage, plus the support of some minor parties, becomes a clear parliamentary majority.
The majority in Congress controls Guatemala’s judiciary. Between them, the Congress and the Judicial Branch of Guatemala, including the Supreme Court of Justice, have decided to take advantage of the long period between the elections and the inauguration, on January 14, 2024, to obstruct the arrival at the presidency of the progressive candidate.
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First they achieved the invalidation of the Semilla Movement, withdrawing its registration as a political party, for falsification of signatures. Then they promoted the annulment of Arévalo’s victory for similar reasons, something very strange in any democratic electoral system, where the elections, after being accredited by the electoral bodies, are irrefutable.
Arévalo and Semilla have had the Guatemalan electoral authority in their favor, specifically the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, which has firmly maintained the August results. Guatemalan civil society has also been mobilized and, curiously, more than the Latin American mechanisms, the inter-American human rights mechanisms, such as the Inter-American Commission and the OAS.
They have wanted to prevent the coming to power of a legitimate president and party. They are motivated by the rejection of the winning candidate’s moderate leftist program: combating corruption, social rights, the environment and international diversification, without concentration of power, militarism or some variant of autocracy, like those of their Nicaraguan and Salvadoran neighbors.
The offensive foreshadows the tensions that Arévalo’s government will experience if it comes to power. The lawfare against the president began already, before the inauguration, and he would not have to give in once he occupies the presidential chair. Everything seems aimed at guaranteeing that, if he governs, he does so with a political trial or a judicial case as a sword of Damocles.
In a region so marked by United States interventionism and authoritarian tendencies of all ideologies, it is encouraging that Arévalo has had the support of the Joe Biden government and various inter-American forums. Even so, we should not expect a succession or a government without turbulence in the coming years.
Article originally published in Spanish in Mexico’s “La Razon”.
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