Guatemala Metropolis, Guatemala – Guatemala Metropolis’s central plaza is historically a gathering spot for protests. However on the evening of August 20, it was full of jubilation, as supporters celebrated Bernardo Arevalo’s election as president.
A congressional consultant, educational and outspoken critic of corruption, Arevalo gained Guatemala’s presidential run-off in a landslide, incomes an estimated 58 % of the votes.
However whereas his victory has reinvigorated hopes for Guatemala’s fragile democracy, consultants warn of challenges forward, as Arevalo faces a hostile public prosecutor, an opposition-led legislature and questions of entrenched corruption within the authorities.
Even his challenger, conservative Sandra Torres, has but to concede defeat, fuelling hypothesis that his election could possibly be contested. Torres’s get together, Nationwide Unity of Peace (UNE), filed a grievance on Friday alleging inconsistencies within the vote tally.
And someday earlier, the Inter-American Fee on Human Rights known as for further safety to guard Arevalo, as he confronted doable demise threats and different “critical, pressing” dangers to his wellbeing.
“Arevalo symbolises the likelihood to start once more — to reconstruct state establishments and fight corruption,” Marielos Chang, an unbiased political analyst, informed Al Jazeera. “However he faces a terrific problem.”
Underdog turned frontrunner
When he’s sworn into workplace on January 14, Arevalo will change into Guatemala’s first progressive president in seven many years, breaking a streak of right-wing governments.
“Arevalo’s victory was a referendum on the ruling coalition in Guatemala,” Edgar Ortiz, a political analyst and constitutional lawyer, informed Al Jazeera.
“He’s a really uncommon candidate in Latin American politics,” he defined. “He’s an mental, he’s a peacemaker, he’s negotiator, and he’ll want these expertise with a view to govern a rustic with political fragmentation, with organised crime and with mistrust from conservative sectors that take into account Arevalo too progressive for Guatemalan politics.”
However the 64-year-old Arevalo is not any stranger to nationwide politics. His father was former President Juan Jose Arevalo, who went into exile after a coup d’état deposed his successor in 1954.
Consequently, the youthful Arevalo was born in Uruguay. After pursuing levels at universities in Israel and the Netherlands, he adopted in his father’s footsteps, coming into each teachers and politics.
Within the Nineteen Nineties, Arevalo served as ambassador to Spain. And in 2019, he gained a seat in Congress with the just lately fashioned Seed Motion, a left-leaning get together fashioned round anti-corruption advocacy.
Arevalo’s success within the first spherical of the 2023 presidential election got here as a shock to many, as he had persistently polled at lower than 3 % in nationwide surveys.
His second-place end earned him a spot within the run-off vote — in addition to a wave of backlash.
An ongoing investigation
Because the August run-off election approached, Arevalo started to climb within the polls, overtaking Torres, the early frontrunner.
However at the same time as a candidate, he confronted pushback from inside authorities establishments. In July, shortly after the outcomes of the primary spherical of voting had been licensed, the Particular Prosecutor’s Workplace Towards Impunity sought to droop the Seed Motion, alleging there have been irregularities in how the get together was fashioned in 2017.
The Particular Prosecutor’s Workplace claimed it had discovered 5,000 fraudulent signatures within the get together’s membership rolls, together with over a dozen lifeless individuals.
However critics have questioned the company’s motives. The Particular Prosecutor’s Workplace is led by Rafael Curruchiche, a politician the USA has sanctioned as a “corrupt and undemocratic actor” for elevating “spurious claims” towards prosecutors concerned in anticorruption efforts.
However, the Particular Prosecutor’s Workplace has promised to proceed its investigation into the Seed Motion even after Arevalo’s election.
If it succeeds in annulling the get together, politicians throughout the Seed Motion could possibly be marooned with out a legislative bloc, stopping them from being appointed to key commissions.
Questions of corruption
Even along with his get together to again him, Arevalo will face an uphill battle to construct consensus and battle what many imagine to be institutional corruption.
In recent times, journalists, attorneys, advocates and judges concerned in anticorruption efforts have fled the nation or confronted arrest on what critics imagine are trumped-up fees.
In the meantime, Arevalo and his operating mate Karin Herrera Aguilar have each confronted “stigmatisation, harassment, hounding, public disclosure of non-public particulars on social media and threats together with two particular plans to harm them and even kill them”, in line with the Inter-American Fee on Human Rights.
Corruption has been a longstanding problem in Guatemala, one which has undermined confidence in public establishments.
In keeping with an August ballot from the market analysis agency CID Gallup and the Basis for Liberty and Freedom, 70 % of the inhabitants sees the administration of outgoing President Alejandro Giammattei as corrupt.
Nevertheless, implementing change could possibly be tough. Upon taking workplace, Arevalo will confront a legislature stacked with opponents. On this yr’s elections, the present ruling get together Vamos and Torres’s UNE get together gained a mixed 67 seats out of a complete of 160, giving conservatives management over Congress.
The Seed Motion, in the meantime, solely earned 23 seats.
However political analysts have speculated that Arevalo may bridge the political divide if he seeks broad consensus.
“Arevalo will have to be very open to speak to many sectors of society, not solely the political sector,” Ortiz mentioned.
“He might want to speak to this previous political get together system that he ran towards and that he beat, and he additionally might want to convey all different sectors collectively, together with the productive sectors, that are suspicious of him.”
Financial considerations spurring migration
Confronted with such opposition, Ortiz believes Arevalo might want to deal with attaining short-term wins with points like crime and medication shortages in hospitals.
“Expectations are actually excessive, however the issues are actually onerous to repair,” Ortiz says. “Within the first six months, healthcare, safety and training are the areas during which he could make a giant distinction.”
Organised crime stays a difficulty all through the Central American area. In Guatemala, the Centre for Nationwide Financial Analysis discovered an uptick in homicides between 2021 and 2022, for a charge of 17.3 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.
Poverty is on the rise, too. Round 60 % of the inhabitants rests beneath the poverty line, and the nation has a few of the highest charges of youth malnutrition in Latin America, with the United Nations estimating that one out of each two kids suffers from it.
The dire situations have compelled tons of of individuals a day to depart Guatemala to search out alternatives elsewhere.
However Arevalo and the Seed Motion have proposed to stem migration by providing higher job coaching and employment, together with by momentary work programmes.
He has additionally expressed openness to working with the worldwide neighborhood, particularly Mexico and the US, to deal with the migration disaster.
“We’re prepared to collaborate and construct worldwide cooperation to search out structural options to the issue of migration,” Jonathan Menkos, a congressman-elect and economist who labored on the Seed Motion get together’s governance plan, informed Al Jazeera.
“We’ve to consider the wellbeing of the individuals and the way we cut back the wants that individuals have that power them emigrate to a different nation.”
