If Bernardo Arévalo is blocked from governing or ousted, it will be an ominous sign in a region where democracy is in peril
Will Freeman writes in The Guardian on the fight to retain democracy in Guatemala in the face of corruption at the highest level and the possible wider implications if democracy falls.
In August, I packed into Guatemala City’s Constitution Plaza alongside thousands of others to watch Bernardo Arévalo, a bookish anti-corruption reformer, give his closing presidential campaign speech. There was something surreal about seeing Arévalo take the stage and make earnest appeals about curbing corruption and governing for the majority as the crowd roared applause.
The Guatemalans I have met are usually cynical about politics and politicians – for good reason. After years of rule by a bloody anti-communist military dictatorship, Guatemala became a democracy in 1985. But corrupt political machines, self-serving business elites and criminal mafias loomed large over every election afterwards.
Since 2019, these forces – startled by the judiciary’s progress investigating corruption – have been tightening the screws on opposition. President Alejandro Giammattei, elected in 2019, concentrated an unprecedented degree of power. Practically everyone I met in Guatemala feared they would soon be living in an authoritarian mafia state. Friends went into exile. Others had bags packed.
It was remarkable that Arévalo made it on to the ballot in that context – and even more remarkable when he came out 20 points and nearly a million votes ahead of his establishment rival. No one, not even members of Arévalo’s upstart party, Seed Movement (Semilla), saw it coming. It was a powerful expression that most Guatemalans believed that their democracy – no matter how severe its flaws – was still worth saving, even as elsewhere in Latin America, the power of anti-democratic demagogues and corrupt lawmakers seemed only to grow.
But Arévalo’s win was just the start of Guatemala’s fight for democracy. It’s been an uphill battle since. Prosecutors and most of congress banded together to launch a slow-motion coup, trying anything and everything to tie Arévalo’s hands and even block him from taking office.
You can read the full piece, with links, here, Will coupmongers stop Guatemala’s president from taking office?
Categories: Corruption, Criminalisation, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Legal, Presidential Elections
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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