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Two center-left candidates will battle for the presidency in Guatemala’s August runoff after the election was tainted by the exclusion of four candidates and a large number of scrap ballots that failed to produce a clear winner in Central America’s largest economy .
and 97% of the vote Looking at Sunday’s election tally, official results showed former first lady Sandra Torres leading with 15.6 percent of the vote, followed by ex-diplomat Bernardo Arrey, son of the leftist president Bernardo Arévalo, with 11.9 percent of the vote.
Torres, 67, who is running for the country’s largest party, the centre-left UNE group, expressed optimism about the outcome. “We are ready to win the election and make me the first female president of Guatemala,” she told a news conference.
Pre-election polls show Arevalo, leader of the Seed Movement party formed six years ago, has no chance of reaching the runoff. “We’re not here to win the polls. We’re here to win the election,” Arevalo said in a statement. post on twitter early Monday. “We’re doing really well.”
The remaining 20 candidates did not even get 8% of the vote in a divided election with high levels of voter distrust. Less than half of Guatemala’s 9.4 million voters cast valid ballots, 40 percent abstained and nearly a quarter of ballots were blank or invalid.
Conservative President Alejandro Giammattei, whose approval rating hovers around 26 percent, is constitutionally barred from seeking re-election. Last year, the US imposed sanctions on its attorney general for “serious corruption”.
Arevalo described himself as a “decent and credible” alternative for voters tired of a system widely seen as rigged to minimize the chances of meaningful reform. He has pledged, if elected, to make fighting corruption a top priority.
Will Freeman, a Latin America fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said Torres’ first-place finish was expected because she controls Guatemala’s biggest political machine, but Arevalo’s success was “completely surprising.”
“This shows that no matter how hard established interests try, they cannot curb the desire of Guatemalans to rid themselves of a corrupt, predatory and corrupt political class,” he added. “Arévalo and Semila will now have the opportunity to make themselves known to the wider public.”
Both the United States and the European Union have criticized electoral courts for banning candidates, accused of making politicized decisions. Carlos Pineda, a businessman who was an early front-runner before being disqualified, had urged his supporters to destroy their votes.
Guatemala has tried to consolidate democracy since the end of a 36-year civil war in 1996, but critics say the quality of government has deteriorated sharply since the U.N.-backed anti-corruption commission was ousted from the country in 2019.
Dozens of journalists and former anticorruption officials have fled Guatemala amid a series of criminal prosecutions, including the recent six-year prison sentence for money laundering charges against one of the country’s most prominent journalists.
Torres is running for president for the third time after losing the 2019 runoff to Giamatai. She was involved in social programs launched by then-husband President Álvaro Colom from 2008-12. In 2019, she was charged with campaign finance violations and unlawful association, but the case was later dropped.
Analysts say Torres will have to contend with a high rejection rate in the second round, with an April poll showing more than 34% Said they would never vote for her.
Guatemala’s economy has been relatively stable and will grow faster than the regional average through 2022, but inequality remains high, with about half the population living in poverty. In 2021 and 2022, patrols will detect more than 230,000 Guatemalans crossing the U.S. border illegally.