With the streets of Guatemala City awash with placards bearing the faces of candidates taking part in the general elections, it’s impossible not to know that elections will be held this Sunday. It is more difficult to find citizens who have a firm belief in who they are going to do it for. Fed up with corruption spreading at various levels of the state and a campaign riddled with allegations of fraud are reflected in the disenchantment of the population and the zero and blank votes collected in just over a month, according to polls have doubled. These polls show that among the 22 presidential candidates, three are the favourites: former first lady Sandra Torres, diplomat Edmond Mulet and Zury Ríos, daughter of dictator Efráin Ríos Montt. But neither will have enough votes (50% plus one) to win the first ballot. So the big question that will occupy the country this Sunday evening is which two candidates will run in the second ballot on August 20th.
Eight years after the democratic spring brought thousands of Guatemalans onto the streets and ended with the ouster of President Otto Pérez Molina over tariff fraud, the hope that made part of the population dream of change has faded. After years of authoritarian rise and institutional decline, accelerated under the presidency of Alejandro Giammattei and leading judges, prosecutors and journalists to jail or exile, the feeling the country has taken over seems to be a kind of silent anger result in many citizens going to the polls and voting for the lesser evil, or “least worst,” as they say in Guatemala.
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“The state of Guatemala is more committed to corruption than to its country. Everything is stolen. “We’re fed up with leaders who just come to suck from the state,” laments Brenda Castellanos, a 49-year-old street vendor and mother of three, who arrived Thursday from the El Amparo neighborhood, a popular Zone 7 neighborhood of the capital, for the closing ceremony of the electoral campaign of Zury Ríos and the mayoral candidate of the Valor Unionista coalition, Ricardo Quiñonez. But the woman won’t be voting for Conservative politics, but for Amílcar Rivera, the Victoria Party candidate who has just over 5% of voting intentions, “because of the security issue, because he’s thinking about how to make an election.” with the gang members [miembro de una pandilla mara]”, says.
Castellanos says there are women in her neighborhood who want to start small businesses but are unable to because gangs are blackmailing them. “How will our country develop if the gang members take away from the women what they want to earn?” she asks. According to polls, insecurity is one of the main concerns, along with corruption and the economy, that will determine the outcome of the Guatemalan election.
“We have to put an end to everything, from the gang members on the street to those in government, because within government there is the worst corruption that can exist in the country: from MPs to the President,” says Brenda Ávila , 42 , mother of two children. Like Castellanos, both are community leaders, aware of the state’s inefficiency in solving their problems and committed from the outset to asking for help from local authorities to meet the basic needs of their neighborhoods. Hence the support for Mayor Quiñonez, who they say has helped them improve their neighborhood’s roads and access to water, which is often scarce in the Guatemalan capital. The two women say their informal jobs allow them to collect just over 3,000 quetzales a month [poco más de 350 euros]. They have to juggle that to make ends meet in a country where the basic family basket is 8,300 quetzales. [más de 960 euros].
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Distrust of the referee
Aside from being fed up with the corruption that hampers development in a country of 17.6 million people where nearly 60% live in poverty, a large proportion of the 9.3 million eligible voters in Guatemala go to the polls with distrust of the arbiter proceed of the process the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE). Information has emerged in recent days about alleged bribes its members are receiving from the ruling party, and judges have also been accused of “fraud” after expelling three of the front runners: left-leaning Mayan leader Thelma Cabrera from the Peoples’ Liberation Movement (MLP); the son of former President Álvaro Arzú, Roberto Arzú of the right-wing Podemos party, and Carlos Pineda, a farmer with no political experience who, in a few months, was able to climb to the top of the polls thanks to his popularity on networks like TikTok.
Carlos Pineda, one of the candidates excluded from the race. Moises Castillo (AP)
“What shocks me is the very serious violation of the political rights of Guatemalans, both of the candidates who were wrongly excluded and, above all, of the tens of thousands of Guatemalans whose first preference was Thelma Cabrera, Roberto Arzú or Carlos Pineda,” says political scientist Ricardo Sáenz. “That had already happened in the 2019 election when they dropped out [la exfiscal general ahora exiliada] Thelma Aldana, but it wasn’t seen as harshly to successively kick out three presidential candidates who challenged the status quo,” he said.
The three excluded candidates have promoted zero voting as a sign of their rejection of the system. “We will not be accomplices of the corrupt pact,” Cabrera said, referring to the informal alliance of politicians, bureaucratic elites and businessmen who protect each other to maintain power. And although the possibility proposed by Mayan politics of boycotting the process with a zero vote currently seems impractical (it would take more than half the vote), polls have shown that this option has doubled in the last month 13, 5% reached.
the second round
Because voting is so fragmented on 22 candidatures, it would be Guatemalans’ second-biggest preference, behind only Sandra Torres’ vote, who has 21.3% of voting intentions according to the latest poll released Thursday. The widow of former President Álvaro Colom and a candidate for the National Unity of Hope (UNE), who has moved from social democracy to more conservative positions over the course of her political career, is standing in an election for the third time.
Although the former first lady has one of the strongest electoral votes in the country, mostly in rural areas, areas traditionally abandoned by the state, she still remembers the aid programs she supported during her husband Álvaro Colom’s (2008-2011) tenure. carried out ) and which she now promises to reproduce, the 67-year-old woman and communicator by profession is met with strong rejection, even in urban areas. This was already evident in the two previous parliamentary elections, in which he lost in the second ballot.
Nearly eight points below her, with 13.4% of support, is the Cabal Party’s Edmond Mulet. The 72-year-old lawyer is recognized in the country for his nearly three decades in the diplomatic service, which he crowned Under Secretary of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and head of the mission to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. But he is also questioned about his role in irregular child adoptions during the internal armed conflict when he was a young lawyer in the 1980s.
The third candidate with a chance to advance to the second round is Zury Ríos of the Unionista-Vamos coalition with 9.1% of the vote. The daughter of dictator Ríos Montt, who died in 2018 at the age of 91 while on trial for the genocide of indigenous Mayan Ixils during the war (1960-1996), the right-wing candidate emerges as the favorite in the ruling party elections. Among his sympathizers is Ricardo Méndez Ruiz, director of the Foundation Against Terrorism, a civil organization that has promoted complaints against members of the judicial system and journalists. The 55-year-old former MP has offered to take over Nayib Bukele’s anti-gang policies in Guatemala and bar those responsible for corruption from holding public office.
Zury Ríos Sosa, daughter of dictator Ríos Montt, during her final election campaign in Guatemala City. Esteban Biba (EFE)
With this panorama, the big question arises as to which of the three will make it into the second round. Aware of the short distance that separates him from Mulet, Zury Ríos released a message on Thursday, before the start of the election ban, warning of the dangers of his main opponent: “He will destroy Guatemala.” Guatemalans: Don’t be fooled by the candidate Fool Edmond Mulet: He will legalize drugs, he will legalize abortion. He wants to impose a foreign agenda. “He disguises himself as a sheep when he’s a dire wolf,” said the contestant in a message posted to her social mediaaccompanied by exciting music.
As a center-right representative, Mulet has publicly defended freedom of expression and the independence of the judiciary, so he could benefit from the useful voice of Guatemalans concerned about their country’s authoritarian course. According to political scientist Sáenz, it has the support of an important section of the city’s middle class. “They see him as the ‘least worst’ candidate capable of slowing down this authoritarian offensive a bit and curbing widespread corruption in Guatemala,” he says.
Given the sense of being fed up with the situation in the country, the analyst also sees another sense of hope being espoused by members of civil society, particularly young people, emerging from the 2015 protests and for political parties ahead of the congressional elections have run for office. who you are also celebrated this Sunday. And he adds: “The Guatemalans are always looking for a way to change the system and I think we will use this election to stop the gangsters as much as possible.”
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