Guatemalans began voting early Sunday morning to appoint their president, under no illusions about changing the reality of Central America’s most populous country, plagued by corruption, poverty and gang violence. criminals.
Voters were already queuing at the opening of some 3,500 polling stations in the country at 7 a.m. local time (1 p.m. GMT). The first results should be known three hours after they close at 6:00 p.m. (00:00 GMT).
“We got up early to vote. We vote with enthusiasm and, afterwards, the presidents, it’s always the same thing,” resignedly told AFP Maria Chajon, 53, who was one of the first to vote in San Juan Sacatepequez, a town with a predominantly indigenous population about twenty kilometers west of the capital.
Polling stations are also open in fifteen cities in the United States, where some 2.8 million Guatemalans reside, even if only 90,000 are registered on the electoral lists.
According to local media, it was an emigrant who voted first, in the American state of Virginia (east), in an office open two hours earlier than in Guatemala.
Outgoing President Alejandro Giammattei (right) is disowned by 76% in the polls, after four years of a non-renewable mandate marked by repression against magistrates and journalists who denounced corruption.
Guatemalans must also elect 160 deputies, 340 mayors and 20 representatives in the Central American Parliament on Sunday.
Former First Lady Sandra Torres, a social democrat, is in the lead with 21.3% of voting intentions in the latest Prodatos Institute poll.
She is followed by the centrist Edmond Mulet, a former high-level diplomat at the UN who is credited with 13.4% of the voting intentions, and by the conservative candidate Zury Rios (9.1%), the daughter of a former dictator now deceased.
A total of 22 candidates are running for the votes of 9.4 million registered voters, disillusioned after the exclusion from the ballot by justice or the Supreme Electoral Tribunal of the favorites of the polls, including Thelma Cabrera (left) belonging to the indigenous population Maya which represents about 45% of the electorate.
These evictions cast doubt on the fairness of the ballot and on the impartiality of the institutions, accused of maneuvering to preserve an authoritarian and corrupt regime based on co-option by the ruling elites.
Sign of mistrust, 13.5% of voters surveyed say they want to deposit a void ballot in the ballot box.
In the 1st round of the previous election, in 2019, only 4.1% did so.
Analysts, NGOs, leaders of indigenous communities, as well as the candidate Edmond Mulet, unanimously criticize the growing control over institutions by powerful sectors of political and financial interest who wish to see corruption and impunity persist.
During President Giammattei’s mandate, a dozen former anti-corruption prosecutors were arrested while others went into exile.
These magistrates had worked with a UN mission against impunity which revealed resounding scandals between 2007 and 2019, one of which led to the resignation and arrest of a head of state.
In addition, the boss and founder of a newspaper critical of the government, José Ruben Zamora, was sentenced to six years in prison just ten days before the first round.
Accused of money laundering, blackmail and influence peddling, Mr. Zamora denounces a “political trial” to silence him and his newspaper El Periodico, forced to cease its activities on May 15.
“All state institutions, including the electoral process, are manipulated by power groups linked to corruption and the traditional power of the oligarchy,” Edie Cux, director of the local branch, told AFP. from Transparency International, a German NGO that tracks perceptions of corruption.
“We are gradually sliding towards an authoritarian model. I am not saying a dictatorship, for the moment, but authoritarian, on the model of Nicaragua”, denounces Mr. Mulet.
Ignoring criticism in the country and internationally, outgoing President Alejandro Giammattei described Friday in a message to the nation Guatemala “a solid democracy, which is consolidating itself with regular, free and participatory elections”.
Guatemala is one of the most unequal countries in Latin America, judges the World Bank, with 10.3 million of its 17.6 million inhabitants living below the poverty line and one in two children suffering from chronic undernutrition, according to the UN.
Finally, criminal gangs sow terror in a country where the murder rate of 17.3 per 100,000 inhabitants is three times the world average.
Misery and violence push thousands of Guatemalans into exile in the United States every year, and remittances sent by emigrants to their families amounted last year to 18 billion dollars, or 19% of GDP. .
25/06/2023 15:34:22 – Guatemala (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
