Guatemala: Bernando Arévalo Wins Presidential Race, Swinging Country Hard Left

Guatemalan leftist candidate Bernardo Arévalo emerged as the winner of Guatemala’s 2023 presidential runoff election on Sunday, defeating leftist former first lady and first-round front-runner Sandra Torres.

The official results published by Guatemala’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) show that Arévalo and his Semilla Movement party obtained 58 percent of the votes, while Torres of the National Unity of Hope (UNE) party obtained 37.24 percent. Voter turnout rate was tallied at 44.98 percent, for a total of roughly 4.2 million votes cast.

Arévalo, a 64-year-old former diplomat and son of former Guatemalan President Juan José Arévalo (1945-1951), will succeed conservative President Alejandro Giammattei after his four-year term ends in January 2024, marking a pronounced ideological shift in the Central American nation.

Giammattei was not eligible for reelection, as the country’s Constitution explicitly prohibits anyone who has served as president from being reelected and heavily punishes anyone who attempts to return to power.

The now president-elect, who ran a campaign primarily promising to fight corruption, thanked his followers shortly after being proclaimed the winner of the runoff election, adding that he accepted the victory “with great humility.”

“Now, united as the people of Guatemala, we will fight corruption,” Arévalo said at a press conference held late Sunday. “We know that there is an ongoing political persecution that is being carried out through the institutions and prosecutors’ offices and judges that have been corruptly co-opted. And we know that this is ongoing.”

“We would like to think that the forcefulness of this victory is going to make it evident that the attempts to derail the electoral process are not going to take place,” he continued. “The people of Guatemala have spoken forcefully.”

Arévalo was the “outsider” surprise during both rounds of the 2023 Guatemalan presidential election despite belonging to a presidential dynasty. None of the polls published during the first round of campaigning, which set up the runoff between him and Torres, indicated that Arévalo would obtain more than three percent of the vote.

During the first round of the presidential election in June, Arévalo came in second place with 11.8 percent, while Torres obtained 15.78 percent of the votes. Arévalo would then go on to defeat Torres with a lead of more than 20 percent during the runoff.

Sunday’s runoff election was Torres’s third attempt to secure the presidency after losing both the 2015 and 2019 runoff elections. In 2019, she lost to current President Giammattei, who obtained 57.95 percent of the votes.

Neither Torres nor the UNE party have publicly acknowledged Arévalo’s victory at press time. The party issued a statement late Sunday announcing that it is in a “permanent session” due to Sunday’s electoral results, adding that it will establish a definitive position when “the results are clarified with total transparency.”

The first round of Guatemala’s 2023 election saw over 20 candidates competing. Although the results of June’s election determined that Arévalo and Torres would be the ones to move on to the runoff election, that election saw more “null” votes cast than the total for any single candidate.

Guatemalan law defines “null” votes as votes not assigned to any of the participating candidates, as the voter’s intention could not be determined on the ballot, whether it is because the ballot was erroneously marked or because the ballot contained “modifications, expressions, signs or figures foreign to the process.” Null votes cast during the runoff election, according to Guatemala’s top electoral authority, amounted to 3.49 percent.

The results of the first round took more than two weeks to be officialized, as the nation’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, ordered the TSE to suspend the results in July while also ordering TSE to review the ballots used in June’s election after ten political parties filed an appeal alleging irregularities in the scrutiny process.

The results were officialized on July 12, minutes before a Guatemalan court ordered the suspension of Arévalo’s Semilla party over claims that the party had engaged in illicit campaign financing and used forged signatures to obtain the TSE’s authorization as a political party.

The suspension was announced by Rafael Curruchiche of Guatemala’s Office of the Special Prosecutor Against Impunity (FECI). Curruchiche was included in the U.S. Department of State’s Section 353 Corrupt and Undemocratic Actors Report in 2021, standing accused of having obstructed investigations into acts of corruption.

Guatemala’s highest court granted a temporary injunction to the Semilla party shortly afterwards, which blocked its suspension. The Guatemalan Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) completely annulled the suspension of the Semilla party on August 18, two days before the runoff election.

Prior to the CSJ’s annulment of Semilla’s suspension, Curruchiche announced last week that he did not rule out the use of search and arrest warrants issued against members of the Semilla party after the runoff election as part of the ongoing investigation into the party.

On his Twitter account, Giammattei congratulated Guatemalans late Sunday for carrying out a peaceful election “with few isolated incidents.” He also congratulated Arévalo for his victory and invited the president-elect to join him in an “orderly transition” after the electoral results are officialized.

Giammattei also announced that he had spoken with Arévalo and invited him to hold a meeting in the Guatemalan Presidential Palace once the results are officialized.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.