Guatemala will not be easy to govern for the winner of the elections

The winner of Guatemalan presidential elections he will not govern an easy nation: corruption, migration, poverty and insecurity, added to the rapidly deteriorating rule of law, are some of the challenges that await him in January when he takes office.

They are not new problems for the country or in Latin America, but they have plunged voters into disenchantment. Some 13% of the 9.2 million citizens eligible to vote plan to cast null votes in Sunday’s elections, according to a survey published by the newspaper Prensa Libre.

Rolando Quiroa, a 62-year-old lawyer, told Associated Press that he had no hope of a change in Guatemala because he sees the main candidates as a continuation of the current failed policy.

Quiroa, who declined to say who he would vote for, said the parties have conditioned voters to think simply of the benefits promised in exchange for votes, but they do not offer a vision to completely change the country.

Not one of the 22 candidates comes close to the 50% required for victory on Sunday, so a second round between the two most voted-outs seems the most likely scenario.

The leading contenders are on the conservative end of the political spectrum. Former first lady Sandra Torres, who is seeking the presidency for the third time, has succeeded with a populist campaign in which she promised support for those in need.

But the real battle will be for second place for the eventual run-off on August 20. The diplomat Edmond Mulet faces the ultra-conservative Zury Ríos Sosa, daughter of the late dictator Efraín Ríos Montt. Both promise strong-arm tactics like in neighboring El Salvador to deal with violence.

“Democracy levels have dropped substantially, so the president is going to inherit a country whose institutions are badly damaged,” Lucas Perelló, a doctor in politics and assistant professor at Marist University in New York and an expert on Central American issues, told AP. We see high levels of corruption and not necessarily a political will to confront or reduce those levels,” he explained.

This deterioration, the experts said, began in the government of Jimmy Morales (2016-2020) when he decided to end the mandate of the International Commission Against Impunity (CICIG), a United Nations entity that exposed dozens of networks of corruption whose tentacles reached the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Powers, also passing through individuals and large businessmen.

After the departure of the CICIG, there was a rearrangement of the political forces that had been hit by the anti-corruption investigations and the persecution of those who carried them out began, many of whom had to leave the country. At the same time, there was a co-optation of the General Prosecutor’s Office, the Human Rights Prosecutor’s Office, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and the Constitutional Court with officials who answer to businessmen and the government, said former prosecutor Juan Francisco Sandoval, now in exile.

Guatemalan democracy is of great interest to the United States, in large part because it continues to be one of the main sources of emigration in the hemisphere.

When US Vice President Kamala Harris visited Guatemala in June 2021, the priority of the Joe Biden administration was to control the migratory flow. Corruption was a priority issue in Harris’s conversations with President Alejandro Giammattei, since according to the US government it was the cause of Guatemalans failing to see a future for themselves in their country.

A month after the visit, the Biden administration announced that it had lost confidence in Guatemala’s commitment to combat corruption and sanctioned Attorney General Consuelo Porras and her top anti-corruption prosecutor, Rafael Curruchiche, for undermining Guatemalan democracy.

Since then, the Attorney General’s Office has opened several processes against its own former anti-corruption prosecutors such as Sandoval.

Guatemalan migration has been less than in the last two years, but they continue to be the citizens who arrive in greater numbers at the US border, followed by Hondurans.

In May, the US Customs and Border Protection reported nearly 15,000 encounters with Guatemalan migrants at its southwest border, a level that has remained constant for the past 10 months but significantly lower than the more than 21,000 in May of last year and the more than 26,000 of May 2021.

The money sent home by migrants, mainly from the United States, is critical to keeping many Guatemalans afloat. Remittances accounted for around 20% of Guatemala’s Gross Domestic Product last year and are expected to reach a record $20 billion this year.

Poverty is another of the reasons why thousands of Guatemalans flee the country: according to official figures, one in two children lives with chronic malnutrition.

In an interview with AP Víctor Aguayo, UNICEF director of child nutrition and development, said that the situation has worsened in the last two years and that “Guatemala needs an urgent response.”

Perelló believes that the electoral offers do not represent the changes that society needs, for which reason he estimates that the next government will be a continuation of the current one.

“The levels of discontent that exist are quite high,” said the academic who assured that null and blank votes and abstentionism will increase in Sunday’s elections.

Ana Esquivel, a 30-year-old vendor from Guatemala City, said she had never voted before and she doesn’t plan to do so this time. On the one hand, because she has to work on Sundays to support her five-year-old daughter, but also because she feels a strong apathy and mistrust.

“I feel that none (of the candidates) is qualified because right now everyone is like saying ‘I’m going to do this’… when they are already in the presidency they no longer do what they say. It’s like everything is lie,” Esquivel said.

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