A survey from CID Gallup exhibits Bernardo Arevalo surging forward of conservative rival Sandra Torres within the lead-up to Sunday’s vote.
A brand new public opinion ballot launched days forward of Guatemala’s presidential race signifies former dark-horse candidate Bernardo Arevalo is heading into the vote with a wholesome lead.
Arevalo, a candidate for the progressive Movimiento Semilla or Seed Motion, is projected to win by 61 p.c, based on a survey printed on Wednesday by the analysis agency CID Gallup.
Such a victory would mark a significant upset over early frontrunner Sandra Torres, a former first woman representing the conservative social gathering Nationwide Unity of Hope (UNE).
Torres and Arevalo are set to go head-to-head in a run-off election on August 20, the end result of a bumpy presidential race rocked by fears of political interference.
On June 25, Arevalo stunned the political institution with an unexpectedly robust end within the first spherical of voting.
The son of Guatemala’s first democratically elected president and a member of Congress himself, Arevalo scored 11.8 p.c of the vote, a complete solely surpassed by Torres at 15.7 p.c. No different candidate polled larger than 8 p.c.
That outcome propelled Arevalo and Torres to Sunday’s run-off. However within the aftermath of Arevalo’s first-round success, rival events questioned whether or not the vote tally was correct, interesting to the court docket system for a assessment.
That continuing finally upheld the outcomes — however on the identical day that the election tribunal licensed the vote, the Legal professional Normal’s Workplace efficiently petitioned a court docket to droop Arevalo’s Seed Motion.
Prosecutors claimed that 5,000 signatures used to kind the social gathering had been fraudulent.
Authorized consultants rapidly denounced the transfer as a violation of Guatemalan regulation, which prohibits suspending a celebration’s authorized standing within the midst of an ongoing election. And the nation’s Constitutional Courtroom finally reversed the decrease court docket’s suspension.
However the Legal professional Normal’s Workplace has continued to take motion towards the Seed Motion, ordering police to raid the social gathering’s workplaces for proof.
Police raids have additionally focused the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the nation’s election authority. The tribunal finally requested an injunction towards the Legal professional Normal’s Workplace to make sure the election’s integrity.
The Guatemalan authorities has lengthy contended with allegations of corruption, as prosecutors have pursued outstanding journalists, judges, legal professionals and public accountability advocates on what critics contemplate trumped-up expenses.
The nation’s lawyer basic, Maria Consuelo Porras, has herself been sanctioned by america “on account of her involvement in important corruption”.
“Throughout her tenure, Porras repeatedly obstructed and undermined anticorruption investigations in Guatemala to guard her political allies and acquire undue political favour,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken mentioned in a press release.
Corruption has emerged as one of many central points within the 2023 presidential marketing campaign, with Arevalo positioning himself as a champion of the anti-corruption motion.
Torres, in the meantime, has pushed a platform primarily based on better authorities transparency. However she too has confronted corruption allegations up to now and was briefly arrested in 2019 on suspicion of marketing campaign finance violations. A choose ultimately dismissed the case.
Wednesday’s CID Gallup ballot discovered that 52 p.c of Guatemalans surveyed had been optimistic that the nation would enhance underneath his management, whereas solely 6 p.c mentioned the identical of Torres.
