During a fraught, months-long transition from the previous government, Guatemala’s president-elect received one very visible sign of support: indigenous groups camped in tents outside the public prosecutor’s building to help ensure he could take office.
“We are all here for the same reason, the resistance, for democracy,” said 54-year-old Santos Brígido Menchú in the camp in Guatemala City this week. “The will of the people must be respected.”
Anti-corruption advocate Bernardo Arévalo faced a series of attempts by prosecutors to block him from taking office. But following backing from the US as well as grassroots supporters, Arévalo is set to be inaugurated on Sunday as the first Guatemalan president in decades considered an outsider from the political and business establishment.
Voters in Central America’s largest economy hope the moderate former diplomat can root out deep-seated corruption and create jobs to halt the daily flow of hundreds of migrants a day to the US.
“Guatemala is suffering the blows of political groups that have co-opted institutions,” Jonathan Menkos, Arévalo’s chosen finance minister, told the Financial Times. “Our focus will be, in four years, delivering a country with a better democracy with modern, transparent public institutions where pathways to corruption have been closed.”
Arévalo, known as a consensus-builder who speaks English, French and some Hebrew, must govern a country where many citizens have lost confidence in the state and journalists and human rights defenders live in fear of persecution.
Since his shock victory in August, prosecutors — who have support from radical rightwing groups in the country — have filed a number of cases against Arévalo and his party and tried to cast doubt on the results, leading the EU and other international bodies to raise the alarm over what they called an attempted “coup”.
Guatemala’s tense transition is taking place as advocates worry about democratic backsliding across the region and as the US is laser-focused on trying to stop migrants heading for its border.
Arévalo, who some supporters call “Uncle Bernie”, has strong support from the US government, a popular mandate — he won 58 per cent of the vote — and the freedom to shift around the country’s budget.
But he is likely to face hostile prosecutors and a public with a history of discontent against its governments, while his party lacks a national political structure and experience.
Arévalo’s team is frantically trying to negotiate congressional leadership that he can work with before Sunday. His party will be the third-largest in congress with only 23 of 160 seats, so support from other groups will be crucial.
“From day one, Arévalo’s challenge will be that there is no guarantee that he can build and maintain a coalition for the four years,” said political scientist Jonatán Lemus. “The situation in Guatemala is still very unstable.”
Arévalo’s election marked a watershed moment for Guatemala’s tempestuous politics, which went into overdrive when the CICIG UN-backed anti-corruption mission began prosecuting members of the elite, including then-president Otto Pérez, in 2015.
The CICIG was kicked out in 2019, and its period of operation was followed by a fierce backlash against prosecutors and journalists involved, many of whom fled to exile or were imprisoned.
Arévalo’s Movimiento Semilla grew out of a protest movement that gained momentum during this period, though he has a more conciliatory style than the leaders of some neighbouring countries.
“His rhetoric, despite being an outsider and although he has a strong anti-establishment bent, is not rhetoric like Amlo [President Andrés Manuel López Obrador] in Mexico or even less like [President Nayib] Bukele in El Salvador,” Lemus said.
Conservative business leaders are now mostly sanguine about Arévalo, several people said, though a small group still believed prosecutors’ claims of electoral fraud.
“They’ve now accepted the idea that . . . they have to work with him,” Roberto Arzú, a Guatemalan businessman who had previously sought to run for president.
“I think Arévalo has also sent messages . . . that there won’t be a frontal collision with the private sector. Hopefully [that] won’t mean [enabling] their privileges, monopolies and abuses.”
Guatemala’s economy is broadly stable but its per capita output is still one of the region’s poorest. Thanks to its geographic position it could benefit from the realignment of global supply chains away from China and closer to the US.
It is also the most populous country in the world that still diplomatically recognises Taiwan, a tie that Arévalo has vowed to maintain while also seeking to increase trade with China.
Rating agency Moody’s scores Guatemala’s sovereign debt just one notch below investment grade, a level Menkos said he wanted to reach by the government’s third or fourth year.
“We believe that by the time this government is finished, we will have left the country with a much better investment climate,” Menkos said. “We’re clear that we need to insert ourselves in the global economy.”
At the same time, the government is likely to face continued judicial pressure. Prosecutors allege Arévalo’s party falsified signatures in registration documents and violated campaign finance rules, and that he engaged in “usurpation” in voicing support for a university protest. Arévalo and the party reject the claims.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has taken rapid action. It revoked US visas for more than half of Guatemala’s congress and placed outgoing President Alejandro Giammattei’s closest adviser under sanctions.
In the days before the inauguration, rumours circulated of last-minute attempts by prosecutors to try to stop Arévalo’s party taking office, a marker of the level of opposition he faces.
“We’re hoping for a government that looks after its people, that fights, but of course it’s going to suffer too . . . it’s not easy,” said Carlos Antonio Joj, 49, a shoe and clothes salesman in the Alta Verapaz region. “There is no magic wand, it’ll be little by little.”
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