On Sunday (25 June), Guatemalans will elect a new president to succeed President Alejandro Giammattei, completing another campaign riddled with controversy.
What is happening on Sunday
Close to ten million eligible Guatemalan voters will choose a new president and vice president, as well as 160 congressional deputies and hundreds of local mayors. If none of the candidates in the presidential race receives more than 50 per cent of the vote a second round will be held on 27 August. The new president is to be sworn in at the start of 2024. (In Guatemala, like Mexico, the incumbent is constitutionally prohibited from standing for re-election.)
The electorate
As of 2020, 59 per cent of the country’s residents were living in poverty, a rate that rose to nearly 80 per cent among the large Indigenous population. The country has the lowest level of tax collection in Latin America – a mere 12 per cent of GDP, roughly half the regional average. Lack of economic opportunity and longstanding discrimination against the Indigenous community drives tens of thousands of Guatemalans to emigrate every year.
A growing number of people have vowed to spoil their ballots as protest.
Guatemalan citizens in the USA can vote as well: the Los Angeles Times noted that there are 12 cities with polling places (up from 4 in 2019). It is too late in this cycle, but if you know someone who has Guatemalan citizenship and is interested in voting in the run-off, this person should contact their local consulate or embassy for details on how to vote.
The situation
At least three major contenders have been barred from running. Guatemala’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal uses the Electoral and Political Parties Law (Ley Electoral y de Partidos Políticos) to remove candidates for serious infractions, such as corruption indictments and convictions and less serious ones, such as paperwork anomalies, speaking out against judicial rulings or perceived campaigning outside the prescribed campaign season (that started in March). One group has tried to get a vice presidential candidate removed because he is an evangelical pastor.
Anti-corruption measures have failed for years in Guatemala, leading most people outside of the dominant groups (political and business elites) to view the elections as a sham. The ruling classes have strengthened their power not only through financial measures but with assistance from the military in crackdowns on peaceful protests. Members of the military, however, are not completely on board with these strong-arm measures: a number of protests broke out earlier this year by former members of the military over a move to cut veteran benefits, including pensions and health care. These protests were confined to the highlands as major trucking routes were blocked for a day. I attended one but was urged to take no photographs and ask for no names.
Crackdown on journalists, which I have documented here before, continues with the sentencing last week of José Rubén Zamora, the journalist and publisher of the El Periódico (that was forced to close down in May).
The amount of corruption from the last few administrations have gutted a country plagued by menacing drug cartels (with USA-purchased weapons), natural disasters (from hurricanes to volcanic eruptions), and the COVID pandemic. The government infrastructure, including the legal system, has been set up to aid the political and business groups to maximize their profits and opportunities at the expense of the majority of the population. They have had help from USA and international corporations who benefit from the low wages paid to workers, the unregulated access and exploitation of natural resources and lack of accountability to local communities. That President Giammattei is unpopular does not bother him or his cronies: their goal is to pad their bank accounts and shield themselves from any legal ramifications.
The leading contenders
Among the twenty or so presidential contenders that remain in the race, these are the leaders:
- Sandra Torres is a former first lady known for her social programs created while first lady, which, among other things, provided cash transfers for mothers to send their children to school. She now promises to slash taxes on basic food products and boost social programs. Torres has pledged to raise the value of conditional cash transfer programs, expand soup kitchen programs, fund educational projects and scholarships, and create a microcredit program aimed at women. She finished second in the last two presidential elections. On security and policing, she has expressed admiration for the repressive measured enacted by the Nayib Bukele government in El Salvador.
- Edmond Mulet is a former congressional deputy, ambassador and high-level UN diplomat who has promised to provide students with electronic equipment and reduce the cost of medication. His centrist platform includes proposals for a universal pension, the provision of free medicines, expanded access to the internet, and youth unemployment projects. He has also vowed to create an ‘gabinete indígena’ (indigenous office) to add the indigenous community voice to public policy and development discussions. He may face being expelled from the race because he voiced opposition to legal persecution of prosecutors and journalists. A Mulet administration would face huge obstacles in passing bills in the Congress as his party holds no seats at this time.
- Zury Ríos was an initial front-runner. She served in Guatemala’s legislature from 1995 to 2012 with a right-wing agenda although she did support a few women’s rights measures supporting laws that cracked down on human trafficking and sexual violence, as well as providing resources to expectant mothers and those living with HIV. On security and policing, like Torres, she has expressed admiration for the repressive measured enacted by the Nayib Bukele government in El Salvador. Ríos describes her party as “classical liberal” and herself as a devoted Christian. Her party is made up of a number of people associated with her father. She is the daughter of the former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, who was convicted to 80 years in prison in May 2013 for crimes against humanity and genocide of the Ixil people, only for the Constitutional Court to annul the sentence (he died in 2018). Despite never being elected, Ríos Montt gained a huge following in Guatemala due to his conversion to evangelical Christianity and his usage of the charismatic style in ruling (and oppressing) the country in the early 1980s. Quoting the Washington Post in 1982: “Since Ríos Montt came to power, international human rights organizations have continued to accuse the Guatemalan armed forces of abuses, including massacres of peasants, in combating a leftist insurgency.” (Note that what many label this era’s ‘leftist insurgency’ was the desires and actions of people wanting human rights and self-determination.) US President Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to Guatemala noted at the time: “Guatemala has come out of the darkness into the light.” When Reagan met him in December 1982, the US President remarked: “I know that President Ríos Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment. I have assured the President that the United States is committed to support his efforts to restore democracy and to address the root causes of this violent insurgency. I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice. My administration will do all it can to support his progressive efforts.” Shameful! (The transcript is at the Reagan Library.) With Reagan’s support and money from USAID, evangelical groups worked with repressive groups throughout Central America to suppress the rights of women, indigenous peoples, rural communities and young people seeking opportunities for better education. Evangelicals make up about 40 percent of the population of Guatemala.
All candidates pledge to address corruption, but without resorting to the UN. You may recall the successful efforts of US Senator Marco Rubio in 2018 to block US funding for a United Nations commission (Comisión Internacional contra la Impunidad en Guatemala, CICIG - International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala) in tackling corruption in Guatemala. Rubio’s motivations were as thin as most conservative conspiracy theories but it did get international anti-corruption oversight out of Guatemala permanently.
All candidates remaining in the race have vowed to honor the dubious laws passed in Guatemala that criminalize abortion, prohibits inclusive sex education and offer no protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in areas such as employment, education, housing, and health care. Some of the more odious laws have been overturned but many remain as well as a legal system tolerant of violence against women and individuals identifying as LGBTQIA+. (More details are available through Human Right Watch.)
What happens next?
If a candidate does not get 50% of the votes cast, a run-off election will be held on August 20th.
Thank you for reading. I will post follow-up analysis early next week.
Alejandro Morales