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An anti-corruption candidate due to take part in Guatemala’s second-round elections said he feared that “criminal political groups” were trying to block him from the presidency after a court suspended the first-round results.
“Guatemala’s democracy is at terrible risk,” Bernardo Arévalo, 64, told the Financial Times. “We fear this [suspension] is opening the door to simply seeing what happens on the way to try to stop us reaching the second round.”
Arévalo was the surprise runner-up in last month’s first-round presidential vote. That gained him a place in the August run-off vote against former first lady Sandra Torres.
Securing a place in the run-off also placed Arévalo in the line of fire of some members of the country’s political and business elite, who analysts say are determined to maintain the status quo in Central America’s largest economy.
A group of 10 political parties filed legal challenges against the first-round results, alleging irregularities in the tally process, and on Saturday Guatemala’s top court ordered the suspension of the official results pending a five-day review. That prompted the US government to express “deep concern”.
Arévalo said the challenges had no legal basis because the period for presenting complaints had already passed. He fears the court’s decision could signal a broader effort to help the governing party candidate, third-placed Manuel Conde, or even delay the process such that Congress would choose a new temporary leader.
Arévalo claimed Guatemala’s political parties were “an expression of a conspiracy by criminal political groups who have different interests” who “refuse to lose control of the system”.
The current president, conservative Alejandro Giammattei, must stand down under Guatemala’s current single-term limit.
In the June election, nearly a quarter of ballots were left blank or spoiled amid public discontent, and no candidate won more than 16 per cent of the vote after a bruising campaign in which four hopefuls were excluded on different technicalities.
The centre-left UNE party, whose candidate Torres came first, was among the parties that filed the legal challenge. Analysts say the groups opposed to Arévalo are probably more comfortable with Torres.
Election observers from the Organization of American States said there was no reason to suspect irregularities large enough to change the result, and the review ordered by the constitutional court was not outlined in Guatemalan law.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken said on Sunday that Washington was “deeply concerned” by efforts to interfere in Guatemala’s election. “Undermining the June 25 election would be a grave threat to democracy with far-reaching implications,” he said in a statement.
Guatemala, which ended a brutal 36-year civil war in 1996, has a stable economy but high levels of poverty and malnutrition, pushing more than 230,000 of its citizens to cross the US border illegally in 2022.
Arévalo, an outsider languishing in the polls before the vote, said he thought the country was at a crossroads. “In these elections the country can really start to correct course and stop this process of deterioration we are in,” he said. “People keep fleeing the country to seek a future in the United States because this country doesn’t offer it to them.”
His party, Movimiento Semilla (Seed Movement), has roots in what some called the “Guatemalan spring”, protests against political corruption that was revealed by a UN-backed investigating body in the country.
Since that body was abruptly shut down in 2019, dozens of journalists, former prosecutors and judges involved in its work have been imprisoned or fled into exile. Arévalo, who took part in the protests, wants to work with the former officials to design a new anti-corruption system.
“They are the Guatemalans who best understand how the corrupt takeover of the system is operating,” he said.
The election also raises foreign policy questions. Guatemala is one of a few countries in the region that retain diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Panama, El Salvador and Honduras have all switched relations to China in recent years. Arévalo wants to strengthen ties with China but said he would base any decisions on what is best for the country.
Arévalo, who was born in exile in Uruguay, said he was a social democrat in favour of a regulated market economy. He would not raise taxes but instead combat evasion, while also exploring public-private partnerships for infrastructure projects.
Arévalo said the past three governments had overseen a democratic deterioration, and he hoped the Supreme Electoral Tribunal would not allow any more illegalities.
“What guarantees are there if the electoral system, which was almost the last guarantee for generating some kind of solution, is lost?” he said.