Guatemala voters send 2 presidential candidates from opposite ends of political spectrum to runoff

A voter has her finger stained with electoral ink after voting during general elections in Sumpango, Guatemala, March 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

GUATEMALA CITY -

Guatemala voters sent two presidential candidates from opposite ends of the political spectrum to an Aug. 20 runoff, giving hope to many disenchanted voters that change might be possible, according to preliminary results Monday.

With 98 per cent of the votes counted, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal reported that former First Lady Sandra Torres for the conservative UNE party had captured 15.7 per cent of Sunday's vote and Bernardo Arevalo for the leftist Seed Movement had 11.8 per cent.

Irma Elizabeth Palencia Orellana, president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, said at a news conference Monday that the results were "practically unchangeable."

Miguel Conde of the ruling VAMOS party sat in a more distant third with 7.8 per cent.

None of the candidates neared the 50 per cent threshold needed to win in the first round. A cluster of other candidates hovered between six and seven per cent of the votes. There was 60 per centturnout, but nearly one million invalid ballots from a frustrated electorate led all the candidates, with nearly all ballots tallied.

Torres, watching the results from a downtown hotel conference room, told reporters that regardless of her opponent, she was ready for the runoff and "God willing, to be Guatemala's first woman president." She recognized the high number of invalid ballots and said it indicated the citizens' lack of confidence in the process.

But the real surprise was the Seed Movement, whose candidate Arevalo conceded the early returns surprised him too. At the central voting computation centre, Arevalo said he would take the faith that voters showed in him on Sunday and use it "to pull the country out of the swamp" if elected.

"The results show the people are tired of the traditional political class," Arevalo said.

The vote came amid Guatemala's worrisome drift toward authoritarianism. Voters worried about security, education and jobs hoped that even if the next president didn't represent the changes they hoped for, he or she would at least recognize the importance of the country's institutions and halt the erosion that occurred under President Alejandro Giammattei.

In four years, Guatemala went from an aggressive pursuit of networks of corrupt actors to a relentless persecution of the very prosecutors and judges who propelled it. More than two dozen justice figures have fled the country.

With them in exile, the government then turned its sights to other critical voices, including the media. Earlier this month, a tribunal sentenced newspaper founder Jose Ruben Zamora to six years in prison for money laundering, in what press freedom groups decried as Giammattei silencing a prominent critic.

As the presidential campaign got underway earlier this year, electoral authorities and courts kept three prominent candidates who had promised to disrupt the status quote -- from both the left and right -- off the ballot.

Barred from participating, they called for their supporters to cast null ballots.

"It's the democratic way of rejecting the system," said Roberto Arzu, who briefly ran a conservative law-and-order campaign before authorities ruled him ineligible for allegedly starting his campaign prematurely.

Other popular excluded candidates were leftist Thelma Cabrera from the Indigenous Mam people and Carlos Pineda, a conservative populist running an outsider campaign and leading in the polls until his candidacy was canceled a month before the vote.

The stronger-than-expected showing by the Seed Movement -- a leftist party whose presidential candidate Arevalo hadn't been among leading candidates in the most recent polls -- was the perhaps the biggest shock. Arevalo is the son of Juan Jose Arevalo, one of only two leftist presidents in Guatemala's democratic era.

In 2019, Arevalo won a seat in the congress for the Seed Movement, which he had founded. He had previously been a career diplomat, serving as Guatemala's ambassador to Spain and a deputy foreign affairs minister in the administration of President Ramiro de Leon Carpio during the mid-1990s.

Arevalo, 64, is a social democrat and campaigned on social justice, as well as restoring the rule of law and separation of powers.

Andrea Fajardo, a 19-year-old veterinary student in the capital said Monday she had voted for Arevalo and was thrilled with the election results. "A person so different has arrived who I feel represents hope for the country, for all citizens and all the young people who are staying here" rather than emigrating, she said.

This is the 67-year-old Torres' third try for presidency. She was first lady during the 2008-2012 presidency of social democrat Alvaro Colom, until they divorced in 2011. Her running mate is a former evangelical preacher and they have pledged to maintain Guatemala's strict anti-abortion law and other policies related to conservative family values. She campaigned on increasing support for the poor and improving security.

More recently, she has been Giammattei's strongest ally in congress, marshalling her party's votes to support him, something that earned her the distrust of many Guatemalans.

Torres was charged with campaign finance crimes in 2019 and jailed. She never went to trial, however, because the Constitutional Court ruled that she couldn't be charged because of a legal reform approved with the support of her party.

Edgar Gutierrez, a political analyst and former foreign affairs minister for Guatemala, said before the vote that some of those most likely to advance to a second round would promise at least a modicum of improvement over Giammattei.

"This time the problem is to rescue the rule of law and reconstruct institutions, because if we don't do this, you won't be able to address all of the underlying problems," Gutierrez said.

The problem isn't isolated to Guatemala in Central America.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has gone to extremes to quash all opposition, first terrorizing with his security forces, persecuting enemies through targeted legislation, then jailing and exiling any critical voices.

El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, is wildly popular at home, but has concentrated power in the congress and judiciary, weakening the system of checks and balances. More than a year after suspending some fundamental rights, the government has jailed more than 60,000 people accused of ties to the country's powerful street gangs.

In Honduras, a prominent government watchdog fled the country with her family this month, weeks after her organization published a report expressing concern that President Xiomara Castro has sprinkled relatives throughout the government in key positions.

"Everything that is happening in Central America is this, a disenchantment in democracy, the discrediting of democratic institutions," Gutierrez said. "So the people, because of that, are leaving Guatemala. They are emigrating because the democracy does not produce results."

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AP videojournalists Fernanda Pesce and Santiago Billy contributed to this report.