2024-01-15 04:19:00
The social democrat Bernardo Arévalo suffered another political blow this Sunday shortly before assuming the presidency of Guatemala, because Congress reduced the room for maneuver of his deputies.
The outgoing parliament, controlled by the right, decided to ignore the 23 deputies of the Semilla Movement, from Arévalo, as a bench for the new legislature, by virtue of a judicial suspension of that party for alleged irregularities in its creation.
The discussions around the Semilla bench hindered the installation of the new Congress, which is the one that must swear in Arévalo as president. The presidential inauguration ceremony is five hours late.
“I am already here at the National Theater for the investiture ceremony,” Arévalo declared in a message on the social network X, without commenting on the decision regarding his party’s deputies.
The uncertainty over the investiture caused representatives of the United States, the OAS, the European Union and Latin American presidents present in Guatemala to urge Congress to transfer command to Arévalo.
The 65-year-old sociologist, former diplomat and philosopher, Arévalo, unexpectedly went to the second presidential round in June with a conservative candidate allied with the ruling party, whom he comfortably defeated with 60% of the votes for his anti-corruption message.
Since then, Arévalo and the Semilla Movement have faced a judicial offensive that he denounced as a “coup d’état,” behind which would be the political and economic elite that for decades has governed the country’s destinies.
The Prosecutor’s Office tried to withdraw his immunity as president-elect, dismantle his progressive party and annul the elections, arguing that there were electoral anomalies.
The attack, based on “spurious” cases according to Arévalo, was condemned by the UN, the OAS, the European Union and the United States, which sanctioned hundreds of prosecutors, judges and deputies for “corruption” and “undermining democracy.”
Arévalo will replace the right-wing Alejandro Giammattei, who has been linked to the so-called “pact of the corrupt” and during whose government dozens of prosecutors, judges and journalists who denounced acts of corruption were exiled.
“The people are fed up with so much abuse, theft, corruption and so much humiliation of the people of Guatemala,” indigenous leader Alida Vicente, 43, told AFP during a march in the center of the capital.
Son of the first democratic president of Guatemala, Arévalo recognizes that he will face enormous challenges, since the “political-criminal elites, at least for a time, will continue to be entrenched” in the powers of the State.
Arévalo will ask Attorney General Consuelo Porras, at the head of the judicial offensive, to resign this week, but analysts do not rule out that the Prosecutor’s Office will continue the persecution and ask Congress to withdraw his presidential immunity.
“She will be under permanent harassment. Her biggest challenge is to respond to the people’s desire: not to be governed by the mafia pact. She has to dismantle it to be able to govern,” analyst Manfredo Marroquín told AFP.
“Recover” the institutions
Although he will have Congress, the Prosecutor’s Office and other institutions against him, the next president has a population that demands changes and defends democracy.
The delay in the investiture unleashed unrest among hundreds of Arévalo’s followers, among them many indigenous people, who, amidst jostling with the police, made their way to approach the parliamentary headquarters.
The Guatemala that Arévalo inherits ranks 30th out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s corruption ranking and with 60% of its 17.8 million inhabitants in poverty, one of the highest rates in Latin America.
Tens of thousands emigrate to the United States every year in search of work and fleeing gang and drug violence.
According to Arévalo, “the most urgent thing” is to recover the institutions “co-opted by the corrupt,” but “the most important thing” is to work for social development.
To do this, he appointed a cabinet of 14 ministers. But it was criticized by some followers for including figures from the private sector or those linked to past governments, and only one indigenous person.
Son of Juan José Arévalo (president from 1945-1951), promoter of social reforms, he was born in Montevideo and lived as a child in Venezuela, Mexico and Chile, in his father’s exile after the coup d’état orchestrated by Washington in 1954 against the progressive Jacobo Árbenz.
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