Anti-corruption candidate’s strong performance turns Guatemala’s presidential race upside down

A presidential candidate campaign against corruption and impunity in Guatemala stunned the political establishment on Sunday by garnering enough votes to advance to a runoff, sparking a showdown with entrenched elites that have long held power in Central America’s largest country.

Bernardo Arévalo, a lawmaker professor with degrees in philosophy and anthropology, won 12 percent of the vote, with 98 percent of the vote counted in Sunday’s first round, the election authority said Monday. Sandra Torres, a former first lady who is considered a standard bearer of the conservative establishment, came in first with nearly 16 percent of the vote.

Despite receiving such a relatively small share of the vote, Ms. Torres and Mr. Arévalo were the top two finishers and will face off in a runoff on August 20 because most Guatemalans did not vote, leaving their ballots blank or destroyed them.

Nearly 40 percent of voters did not participate in Sunday’s election, while 24 percent of ballots remained blank or voided, meaning nearly two-thirds of the electorate chose not to vote for any candidate.

Mr. Arévalo’s startling performance and profound lack of voter participation demonstrate a high degree of disenchantment with Guatemala’s political system, election analysts said. The government has come under scrutiny for increasingly authoritarian tactics targeting independent news media that have forced dozens of judges and prosecutors into exile to fight corruption.

“We see how the population expresses its fatigue with a system, with a form of politics and government,” said Edie Cux, the director of Citizen Action, a nonprofit that was part of an alliance of groups that oversaw the election process . “The population is demanding reforms.”

Two established candidates considered the top contenders — Edmond Mulet, a former diplomat, and Zury Ríos, a daughter of a former dictator convicted of genocide — finished fifth and sixth, respectively. Manuel Conde, the candidate of the party of the current president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, came third.

Before Sunday’s vote, the country’s electoral authority had disqualified at least four candidates, including Carlos Pineda, a mercurial frontrunner who had upset the political establishment, and Thelma Cabrera, an organizer who sought to unite Guatemala’s long-marginalized indigenous voters .

The campaign was dominated by a handful of recurring themes, including an increase in violent crime and economic challenges in a country with one of the highest rates of poverty and inequality in Latin America.

Ms. Torres, who came second in the two most recent presidential elections, has pledged to tackle the violence by emulating a strategy used in neighboring El Salvador aimed at tackling gangs.

Yet it was Mr. Arévalo, often referred to as Tío Bernie (Uncle Bernie) and a son of a president who was fondly remembered by many Guatemalans for creating the social security system in the 1940s, which seemingly came out of nowhere to garner enough support to get ahead. The leadership of his party, called Semilla, or Seed, is largely made up of urban professionals, such as college professors, engineers and small business owners.

Loren Giordano, 33, a graphic designer and entrepreneur in Guatemala City, said she voted for Mr Arévalo because his party is promoting measures she supports, including proposed legislation to cut spending on training cancer specialists, equipment and medicines. to increase. But the measure failed.

Still, Ms. Giordano is not confident that Mr. Arévalo’s performance on Sunday will produce tangible improvements, even if he wins the presidency.

“I support Semilla and I think they want to change something, but I don’t think the system will allow it,” she said. “It seems utopian to think that we will have a candidate who is not involved in corruption and narcopolitics.”

Mr Arévalo, despite his unexpected appearance, faces a tough battle against Ms Torres in the coming weeks. She has wide name recognition and builds on her time as first lady, when she was the face of popular anti-poverty programs, including food aid and remittances for poor families.

Ms Torres can also count on the support of an establishment unlikely to upend the status quo, represented by Mr Giammattei, who was barred by law from re-election for a second term. Some other countries in the region, especially Mexico, have similar laws.

During his tenure, Guatemala has shifted existence a regional model for its anti-corruption efforts for a country that, like several of its neighbors, has undermined democratic standards.

But Mr Arévalo has also skillfully engineered an insurgency campaign, mixing the deployment of memes with serious positioning on issues such as improving public health services. He has repeatedly said that he would recruit prosecutors and judges forced to leave Guatemala as advisers to help him tackle corruption.

In a country where the winning election formula often includes big-socket campaigns, which take up a lot of airtime on national television channels and the blessings of economic elites, Mr. Arévalo had “none of these,” said Marielos Chang, a political scientist at the Universidad del Valle in Guatemala City .

“When the presidential campaign started three months ago, no one would have believed that Bernardo Arévalo would have enough votes to continue,” she said.