Guatemala elects its future president this Sunday for the next four years in which it will have to solve structural problems such as insecurity, which causes more than 3,000 homicides a year, or poverty and extreme poverty that affects six out of ten people. The candidate of the National Unity of Hope (UNE), Sandra Torres, will try for the third consecutive time to become the first woman to preside over the Central American country. She will face the candidate of the Seed Movement, Bernardo Arévalo de León, who was the great surprise of the first round of the elections held on June 25 by coming in second place when no survey placed him in leading positions. Torres, who was the first lady in the government of Álvaro Colom (2008-2012), represents the old conservative politician who has based her campaign on opposing abortion, same-sex marriage and “gender ideology”, as well as such as defending religious freedom and free enterprise by promising all kinds of economic bonuses for the population. For his part, Arévalo de León was a Seed deputy in Congress for the last four years and is the son of former Guatemalan president Juan José Arévalo (1945-1951). He focused his campaign on his promise to get Guatemala out of the “swamp of corruption” and on convincing the population that it is the only hope of “changing history” and achieving the new ‘spring’ in reference to the period of social progress begun by his father, who was the first democratic president after decades of military rule.
Both candidates have only faced each other once in a presidential debate in which they were able to contrast their government programs that will apply as of January 14, 2024 when the new president assumes power to replace the current president, Alejandro Giammattei.
One of the main problems affecting Guatemala is insecurity, due to extortion and murders committed by the Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha gangs, in addition to the daily violent assaults suffered by the population. To combat it, Arévalo de León proposes “regaining control of the streets and territories that are now in the hands of criminals with 12,000 new police officers, regaining control of prisons, and using intelligence tools to anticipate crime.” The Semilla candidate insists that corruption is to blame for so much insecurity in the country, because “criminals can buy civil servants, judges, police officers and the military to be able to do their job.”
Torres promises to increase the number of police officers to 70,000, as well as declare extortionists terrorists, militarize and intervene in prisons, and take combined forces of police and army to the streets to “give security to the entire population.” The candidate also promises to “put the prisoners to work”, as well as invest in technology to have “control of everything and eliminate fear in the streets”.
Poverty and extreme poverty causes two out of three children under five years of age in Guatemala to suffer from chronic malnutrition, to the point that, in 2023, 23 children have already died of hunger. This situation causes thousands of people to opt for irregular migration, especially to the US. In this sense, Bernardo Arévalo advocates “increasing productivity” in those areas that “have been abandoned because previous governments have not been interested in bringing roads and services there.”
Likewise, it promises conditional economic transfers to 500,000 households, as well as loans with a rate of 5 percent for new entrepreneurs and the creation of one million temporary jobs in the next four years for the construction of public infrastructure.
Torres proposes a monthly bonus of 700 quetzales (90 euros) to each mother so that she can “send her children to school” and thus ensure that the million children who have abandoned their studies due to lack of economic resources return to study. . Likewise, it has promised a solidarity bag of food to each family with basic products, while announcing that it will eliminate VAT on ten food products so that the population saves “between 150 and 400 quetzales per month (18 and 56 euros). The little that both candidates agree on is fiscal policy, since neither proposes to raise taxes or create new rates. Arévalo de León hopes to recover 40 percent of the budget that goes to corruption each year in order to build new hospitals, where currently there are no medicines.Torres goes further and announces that he will eliminate taxes, although he hopes to achieve a “better collection” until reaching 250,000 million quetzales in four years (31,000 million euros).
The head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity in Guatemala, Rafael Curruchiche, continues his persecution of the Seed Movement. After his frustrated attempt to have the Supreme Electoral Tribunal suspend the legal personality of this political party, he reported on Thursday the progress of the investigation against Semilla. Thus, he detailed so far, they have detected that 18 people who were deceased joined the formation and that, according to him, their signature and handwriting were falsified. Likewise, he added that there are 319 affiliated people, whose names do not match the Personal Identification Document, while there are “184 people repeated up to two and three times in the lists of the Seed Movement.”
In this sense, he warned that new arrest warrants against people involved in these events are not ruled out, nor requests for the withdrawal of immunity after the elections next Sunday, which could affect Arévalo de León himself. Thus, the Semilla candidate has denounced that it is all about “political persecution” against his party, which, in his opinion, they want to get out of the electoral contest because of his promise that he will end the corruption that has dragged the country in the last 30 years to high levels of misery and inequality.
Despite the fact that a Guatemalan judge ordered the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to suspend Semilla’s legal status, finally, the Constitutional Court granted an amparo that prevented it, which made it possible for the campaign to develop normally, to the point that That party leads the intention to vote, with 64.9 percent, compared to 35.1 percent for Sandra Torres, according to the latest survey published by Prensa Libre.
