Guatemala's shock candidate Arevalo poised to tackle corruption

GUATEMALA CITY: Guatemalan presidential candidate Bernardo Arevalo, who pulled off an upset in Sunday elections by advancing to a run-off, declared Monday that if he wins, his priority will be fighting corruption.

Without that “we are not going to be able to rescue the institutions we need to generate national development,” Arevalo told AFP at the close of a celebratory rally in the capital’s Constitution Square.

Guatemala “needs honesty and decency to bring development,” added the 64-year-old sociologist.

The battle between Arevalo — who unexpectedly ended in second place having polled at number eight — and former first lady Sandra Torres means Guatemala will have its first leftist leader in more than a decade.

Torres, the ex-wife of late former president Alvaro Colom, came in first Sunday with about 15.8 percent of votes cast, followed by Arevalo with just under 12 percent, according to the near-complete count early Monday.

The election saw low turnout and a high rate of invalid ballots cast, with few Guatemalans holding out hope that their next president will solve the problems of crushing poverty, violence and corruption.

But the emergence of this upstart candidate — the son of reformist president Juan Jose Arevalo (1945-1951) — ignited many disillusioned Guatemalans, and was the buzzing topic Monday in workplaces, cafes, restaurants, buses and taxis.

“We are very excited, very enthusiastic. We have touched the hope of a people. The people have turned out (to back us), they have given us support that no one saw coming. And with that hope and that support, we are going to rescue the country’s institutions,” said Arevalo.

“We are going to win the second round and we are going to give this country the future it deserves and not the swamp they have kept us in for the last 20 years,” said the candidate born in Montevideo, Uruguay, where his father was exiled in 1954.

“I am convinced (that I will win) after what happened yesterday. We know we are on the right track,” he added.

Hundreds of people attended the rally in the plaza, where Arevalo told supporters that the “dirty politics” in the country would be forgotten.

“I love and want Guatemala. I want there to be a radical change and I think we are going to have it with this person,” Manolo Garza, a 63-year-old machinery importer, told AFP.

“We have lived for a long time with the burden of many governments that have really only been interested in their own welfare and the people definitely not at all. We really see hope in Bernardo,” Eveling Zapata, a 51-year-old teacher, told AFP.

Both Torres and Arevalo are social democrats. Both oppose the legalization of same-sex marriage and elective abortion in the staunchly Catholic Central American country.

Whoever wins the second round on August 20, it will mark an ideological shift in Guatemala after three right-wing presidents, including current President Alejandro Giammattei, due to leave office in January 2024.