2023-08-19 05:00:00
Bernardo Arévalo, candidate of the Seed Movement; and Sandra Torres, from the National Unity of Hope Esteban Biba / EFE and Cristina Chiquin / REUTERS
Second round this Sunday between Torres and Arévalo after a tense campaign
19 ago 2023 . Updated at 05:00 h.
the second round of his presidential election, considered the most important since the return to democracy, 37 years ago, in a climate of high tension. At the polls, the former first lady, Sandra Torres, in her third attempt to come to power, faces off against the big surprise of the first round, the social democrat Bernardo Arévalo.
The election temperature It’s up several degrees since Thursday. The very controversial head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity, Rafael Curruchinche, included by the US in an international list of corruption, warned that legal actions against the Seed Movement, the formation of Arévalo, will continue after the appointment at the polls of this Sunday. “We do not rule out searches or arrest warrants after August 20,” said the questioned jurist, assuring that the “suspension” of the Arévalo party will take place on that date, after the complaints against him for alleged irregularities in the signatures presented. for registration as a political party.
The actions of the public ministry after the first round of elections already set the Guatemalan social climate on fire in the first weeks of July, when a judge, also flagged as corrupt by the US, questioned the decision of the Prosecutor’s Office to politically disqualify the Seed Movement, due to the alleged existence of false guarantees in its registration document as a party, a ruling finally suspended by the Constitutional Court.
This group of prosecutors is within what Arévalo and the Guatemalan opponents define as el establishment corrupto who has run the country for decades. “It is a mixture where the presence of representatives of traditional capital is easily recognizable, several emerging businessmen, whose capital is the product of doing business with the State, various expressions of organized crime, active and retired military commanders, organizations of ex-combatants. , and members of the institutions as part of the Prosecutor’s Office, the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court and the comptroller,” the political scientist Enzo Rosal told La Voz de Galicia.
“Several factors unite them. They are beneficiaries of corruption and impunity in general, they are not willing to lose spaces of power, and even less to cede them and for the opposition to discover their misdeeds, “adds the analyst.
crutch party
Torres, who began in politics with progressive positions, but which has decidedly moved closer to conservatism in recent years, is pointed out by the Guatemalan opposition as part of that establishment. «Torres’s party, the National Unity of Hope, is always the wild card that makes it easier for the government party to govern. It has never been an opposition after former president Álvaro Colom, Torres’ ex-husband, left the presidency,” says political scientist Luis Guillermo Velásquez.
Polls show a clear advantage in the polls to Arévalo, which proposes a frontal fight against corruption, and the return to the country of the jurists, journalists and activists exiled for years after denouncing state corruption. The center-left candidate would get between 60% and 70% of the vote, according to demographic studies, despite the constant accusations of fraud to which he has been subjected.
Sandra Torres, from the National Unity of Hope: from progressivism to conservatism
The former first lady of Guatemala Sandra Torres Casanova, from the official formation National Unity of Hope (UNE). CHIQUIN CRISTINA | REUTERS
Sandra Torres (Melchor de Mencos, 1955) rose to the forefront of politics when her husband, the center leftist Álvaro Colom, reached the presidency of Guatemala in 2008. from your position as First Lady, He executed highly celebrated social programs in the Guatemalan countryside, especially among the indigenous population.
It is in the rural areas where the now presidential candidate maintains her stronghold of voters, after promising the return of those measures, although pointing out in her campaign that she will do so “without taking anything from anyone.” It is the third time that Torres has run for office. She tried in 2012, but her candidacy was annulled by the authorities and she lost to Jimmy Morales in 2015 and Alejandro Giammattei in 2019.
Torres recently gave a ideological turn from center-left positions to others close to conservatism, showing himself radically against the easing of abortion and equal marriage, postulating the pastor of an evangelical congregation as vice president.
Bernardo Arévalo, from Movimiento Semilla: a politician from the cradle
Academic Bernardo Arévalo de León seeks to become president of Guatemala CHIQUIN CRISTINA | REUTERS
Bernardo Arévalo (Montevideo, 1958) has been steeped in politics since he was a child. He was born in the Uruguayan capital, where his father, former President Juan José Arévalo (1945-1951), known in Guatemala for being the creator of the country’s social securitywhich he was forced to abandon after the 1954 coup.
Nonetheless, sociologist and writer He did not reach Guatemala’s high national politics until 2020, when he became a deputy for the center-left Movimiento Semilla, created during the protests that in 2015 ended in the removal of former president Otto Pérez Molina, currently in prison for corruption. He was previously ambassador to Spain between 1995 and 1996.
The polls placed him just in the seventh place on the first lap, but his candidacy collected the protest vote against the system, after the disqualification by the electoral authorities of three leading candidates, of different ideologies. He proposes the “rescue of the State in the face of corruption” and greater investments in education and health.
Filed in: Guatemala
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