Guatemala is heading towards authoritarianism. The Central American country is holding presidential elections this Sunday and none of the three candidates with the possibility of going to the second round on August 20 proposes a radical turn to the situation left by the outgoing president, the right-wing Alejandro Giammattei, accused of corruption and under whose government there has been an even greater institutional deterioration than that achieved by his predecessor, comedian Jimmy Morales (2016-2020).
The latest survey, published on Thursday by the newspaper Prensa Libre, gives first place to the former first lady, Sandra Torres (215%), from the National Unity of Hope party, which calls itself a social democrat but which upholds such a populist and conservative as that of its two main contenders. They are the diplomat Edmond Mulet (13%) and Zury Ríos (9%), daughter of the dictator accused of genocide Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-1983).
To a greater or lesser extent, the three best-positioned candidates have shown sympathy for the strong hand against gangs carried out by the authoritarian and populist president of neighboring El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, which has led to the arrest and mass imprisonment of thousands of criminals. with methods that in many cases violate human rights.
Bukele has 91% citizen acceptance, something that has not gone unnoticed by Guatemalan politicians in a country where crime, along with corruption and poverty are the main concerns.
The next president will have fertile ground to move towards bukelismo, after the Giammattei government has co-opted the electoral authorities and the Judiciary to ingratiate itself with an establishment that is always alert to any threat of change. Last May, the country’s Administrative Court annulled the candidacy of populist businessman and tiktoker Carlos Pineda, an outsider who was leading the electoral polls. And in February, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal had denied the registration of the presidential candidacy of the Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples, the only formation from the left that could question the authoritarian drift of Guatemala.
In addition, Giammattei has harshly repressed any protest against his government -several protesters lost their eyes in police charges- and has seen how the courts removed critical journalists, such as the founder of elPeriódico, José Rubén Zamora, who last week was sentenced to six years in prison for money laundering, a crime for which other directors of this newspaper were also sentenced, one of the main newspapers in the country, which was characterized by publishing corruption investigations of Giammattei and previous presidents. Financially suffocated, elPeriódico closed last May.
The only one of the three main candidates who questions the persecution of the critical press is Mulet, who has a somewhat more moderate conservative image after having been chief of staff of the UN General Secretariat (2015-2016) when it was occupied by Ban Ki. Mun, and head of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (2010-2011).
Giammattei also has his own candidate in the elections this Sunday, Manuel Conde, although in the polls he barely gets 4%. However, for the president it represents the opportunity to retain representation in Congress, since legislative elections are also held tomorrow.
“Guatemala is governed by a corporate tyranny that every four years changes its general manager.” This is how raw the situation is summed up by journalist Juan Luis Font, who was director of elPeriódico for 17 years and who has been in exile in Mexico City since April 1, from where he answered the telephone this week for La Vanguardia. “This corporation seeks wealth for the elites, the country is in the hands of a small group of people,” adds Font, who recalls that in Guatemala “a third of children are malnourished.”
Font was also accused of money laundering, although court charges were never filed against him. However, he is convinced that “if he were in Guatemala they would arrest me like Zamora.”
