This Sunday a picture will emerge in Guatemala that seemed impossible six months ago. The progressive sociologist Bernardo Arévalo (Montevideo, 65 years old) will be sworn in as president of the Central American country during a ceremony at the Miguel Ángel Asturias Cultural Center in the capital. If there are no last-minute surprises, which few dare to rule out, after a long process of transfer of power full of legal hurdles in which the elected president himself has denounced an attempted coup to prevent him from taking office, the leader of the Semilla movement , will be awarded the presidential sash at an event attended by a dozen Latin American leaders and the King of Spain.
Arévalo, a diplomat and conflict resolution expert who also served as deputy, will assume the presidency with the main promise of fighting corruption, later tackling the problems of Central America's most populous country, home to more than 17 million people, high poverty and inequality rates as well great need for development in the areas of education, health or infrastructure. His election bid has brought him head-on into what is known in Guatemala as the “corrupt pact,” an informal alliance of politicians and bureaucratic and business elites who protect each other to retain power. The latest signs came after Arévalo's unexpected first-round victory in June and his subsequent triumph in August, when the State Ministry, led by Attorney General Consuelo Porras, began a series of attempts to prevent the transfer of power through legal means.
View of the Congress of the Republic of Guatemala, guarded by police, this Friday before the inauguration of Arévalo. Monica González Islas
These attempts failed largely thanks to the determined defense of democracy and the voices of Guatemalans promoted by indigenous movements throughout the country, which have resisted for more than 100 days with various actions, such as a sit-in in front of the headquarters of the Guatemalan Public Ministry . in Guatemala City. And also due to the constant condemnation of the international community, which has denounced any offensive by the prosecutor's office aimed at preventing the inauguration of the elected president and disqualifying his party, the Semilla Movement.
Late Saturday afternoon, without elaborating, European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell announced in a press conference with Arévalo the adoption of a “legal framework of sanctions that can be imposed on those who do this. “hinder the normal development of the democratic process in Guatemala.” His visit to the Central American country, said Borrell, “is evidence of the European Union's firm commitment to the people of Guatemala and its democracy, a democracy that has been threatened and that we want to defend and support here,” he added.
And although a Constitutional Court ruling issued in mid-December offered guarantees that Arévalo could be sworn in this Sunday, Guatemala still lives in uncertainty as to whether the inauguration will be respected or whether it will try to prevent it with a last-ditch judicial attack. Hour. Among the uncertainties is whether or not outgoing President Alejandro Giammattei, under whose government authoritarianism has increased, will attend the congress event as planned; and also whether taking over the bank can guarantee the Semilla movement that it can operate and even preside in a chamber in which the ruling party will be in the minority.
A government with great expectations and no honeymoon
In any case, the government team is aware that with the inauguration of Arévalo one obstacle course ends and another begins. “We understand that what is coming will be much harder […] “It will not be easy to compete against several state institutions that have declared themselves coup plotters from day one,” says Andrea Reyes, the elected representative of Semilla, a 33-year-old lawyer who emerged from the student movement and the last spent half a year defending his party from the State Ministry's attacks from the legal trenches. Arévalo assured that after taking command he would demand the resignation of Consuelo Porras, who was sanctioned by the United States in 2022 “for involvement in significant acts of corruption” and whom he accuses of leading the coup attempt against him. “One of the first actions, if not the first, will be to call for the resignation of the attorney general,” the president-elect said weeks ago. This will most likely be his first foray against the official's sure resistance.
Andrea Reyes, elected representative of Movimiento Semilla, in an interview this Friday in Guatemala City.Mónica González Islas
Reyes also defends that the arrival of Semilla in the executive branch represents a new way of making policies, based on the dialogue of ideas, compared to the one prevailing in the country over the last 40 years, which, in his opinion, is based on “negotiations and money” “: “Politics has been a business and a happy confluence of interests of people who want to control some kind of state institution, and that is what drives politics since 1985 until today.” For ideologically motivated people it is a bit complicated, to come to power and begin to create a programmatic framework so that Guatemala can move forward in accordance with our principles. “It’s something unprecedented,” he claims.
Political analyst Raquel Zelaya believes that the Arévalo government must not only establish the ability to govern despite the opposition of a part of the judiciary and a minority in Congress, but also learn to deal with the excessive expectations of a part of the population that supports it has, and they also reward indigenous movements. “The indigenous population has played its part, they have shown impressive civic maturity and have been crucial to some of the triumphs and stages that have been overcome,” says Zelaya, President of the Association for Research and Social Studies (ASIES) of Rafael Landívar University. .
The Arévalo government's first decision in this regard disappointed a part of the population. It was the announcement of his cabinet, a joint team of seven men and seven women, including only one indigenous person, the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, Miriam Roque. The president-elect himself admitted that he was committed to “multiculturalism” of the country, but showed his intention to include these peoples in other levels of government. While the Board of Municipal Mayors of the 48 cantons of Totonicapán, the indigenous organization that has led the resistance in defense of democracy that promoted his presidency, has regretted that the Cabinet does not reflect the peoples that make up the country, the Maya, the Garífuna and the Xinka.
For Zelaya, Arévalo needs to go beyond appointing ministers to promote decentralized government and “implement policies that contribute to having a plural Guatemala like back in the peace accords.” In this sense, he advocates the dialogic character that the elected president has shown in his career. “He is a consensual character who brings positions together. That has been the strength of his international career and I think he has a party base that, on the contrary, is rather hostile to these positions because of his youth and because he does not have much experience. Therefore, he also has to manage the fairly strong currents within his party,” the analyst continues, referring to the different sectors of the Semilla movement.
In addition, he advocates for “an absolutely transparent leader” who denounces any anomaly in appointments, purchases or contracts without “his pulse shaking, whoever it is”. “That’s how you gain respect,” says Zelaya. “The most realistic thing for him is to promise and keep promises with transparent leadership, which in the long term is the same as fighting corruption. What happens is that it becomes very ingrained and therefore over-expectations arise.”
View of the historic center in Zone 1 of Guatemala City this Friday. Monica González Islas
“Guatemala needs this government to succeed. These are the last options we have for a minimal democratic balance,” says the president of ASIES. “If this government does not achieve success, our situation could be very precarious because organized crime is very powerful. Many of the incoming district representatives are affiliated with them and we need to pay much more attention to this than any other issue.”
These high expectations raised by the Semilla Movement, a party that emerged in the heat of the 2015 anti-corruption street protests, are recognized even by representatives of their party, such as MP Andrea Reyes: “I have the feeling that we pull the land out of the mud. It is very sunk, it is very complicated and we fear that at the end of the period we will have spent all the time defending the government and that we will not be allowed to really work. “This is a reality that we must confront over the next four years and guarantee remarkable results to lift Guatemala out of underdevelopment.”