José Luis Sanz writes in El Faro about the fears that Bernardo Arévalo holds if he wins the upcoming run-off in the Guatemala presidential election. It is well known that dark forces collude in violence and corruption to destabilise the country, and to protect the so-called pacto de corruptos – the alliance of corrupt actors bleeding the country.
The interview highlights some of the challenges of being able to work with the Congress seeing as his party (Movimiento Semilla) has only a very modest number of seats. The fact that his run-off candidacy has managed to unite many different sectors in hoping for a bright future for Guatemala gives grounds for hope for a democratic and just future.
Six weeks ago, the presidential first-round election reordered Guatemala’s political map around the Semilla Movement, a small progressive party born six years ago with the electoral baggage of being too urban, too intellectual and middle-class, too “should-be” obsessed. Next Sunday, August 20, the surprise would be if the party candidate, the 65-year-old academic and former diplomat Bernardo Arévalo, does not win.
In a country suffocated by racism and elites’ gluttony, Arévalo has unwittingly managed in the last two months to bind together the excitement of urban university students, hopes of Indigenous movements denouncing centuries of exclusion, and anti-system exhaustion that in other countries has stoked populism. While the state has incarcerated journalists and exiled 30 of its brightest anti-mafia judges and prosecutors, the son of the first president of the 1944 revolution promises a renewed democratic spring.
He will push what the mighty international anti-impunity commission CICIG fell short: to cleanse state institutions of corruption and lay bare the very business, partisan, military, and criminal alliances that since June 25 have sought by every means possible to bar his candidacy.
You can read the full interview, including links and photos, and a link to the Spanish version, here, “If I win the presidency there will be efforts to stop the transfer of power”.
Categories: Corruption, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Justice, Presidential Elections
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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