Against all expectations, two social democrats, a former first lady and the son of a former president, will face each other in the second round of the presidential election in Guatemala, after a first round marked by strong abstention, a sign of the extent of the voter distrust.
The battle between the two contenders, Sandra Torres and Bernardo Arevalo will in any case give the country its first left-wing leader for more than a decade.
Favorite in the polls, Sandra Torres came out on top of the 22 candidates with 15.78% of the vote, far from the 21.3% of voting intention with which she was credited by the Prodatos Institute, according to the almost final results published. Monday.
MP Bernardo Arevalo, son of the country’s first democratically elected president, defied all predictions by winning 11.80% of the vote: he was only placed in 8th place by the opinion poll, with 2.9 % of voting intentions.
“We have always said that we did not come to win in the polls, but to win at the polls,” said the 64-year-old sociologist overnight from Sunday to Monday.
We are “impressed because we did not know him”, reacted to AFP Isabel Santos, a 38-year-old housewife, interviewed in the center of the capital. “The feeling I have is that of many Guatemalans, happiness, because candidates who did not come to do good but rather to continue the corruption that exists in the country do not predominate,” said Erick Garcia, 41 years old, taxi driver.
The two candidates for a non-renewable four-year term as head of state will have to be decided on August 20 in a second round.
“Whatever (my opponent) we are going to win,” said Ms Torres, who is making her fourth attempt and has failed in the second round in the last two polls.
With two Social Democratic runners-up, this year’s election will mark a break after three successive right-wing presidencies: Otto Perez (2012-2015), Jimmy Morales (2016-2020 and incumbent President Alejandro Giammattei.
Just over 40% of the 9.4 million registered voters abstained (37.84% four years ago). Above all, 17.4% of voters slipped a null ballot into the ballot box, compared to 4.1% in the previous election, while nearly 7% voted blank.
Sunday’s poll was generally calm, although incidents erupted in two localities on the outskirts of the capital amid accusations of fraud.
Ms Torres denounced “vote buying” by the conservative “Vamos” party of the outgoing president, whose candidate Meme Conde obtained a surprising 3rd place.
Three favorites, including a leader of the Maya indigenous peoples, were excluded from the competition. These evictions cast doubt on the fairness of the ballot and the impartiality of the institutions, accused of maneuvering to preserve an authoritarian and corrupt regime based on the cooptation by the ruling elites.
Outgoing President Giammattei was disavowed by 76% in the population at the end of a mandate marked by repression against magistrates and journalists who denounced corruption.
During his tenure, a dozen former anti-corruption prosecutors were arrested while others were forced 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.
“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 antenna, told AFP. local anti-corruption NGO Transparency International.
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 homicide rate of 17.3 per 100,000 inhabitants is three times the world average.
26/06/2023 22:39:55 – Guatemala (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
