Today after having counted 82.4% of the votes, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal announced that Sandra Torres (UNE) and Bernardo Arévalo (Movimiento Semilla) will go head to head in the second round of elections in August to elect the next president of Guatemala. 

The election results were very unexpected with the election polls being way off apart from the fact that Sandra Torres would win the first round. In the pre-election poll by Prensa Libre, Arévalo was expected to finish in 8th place, hence, he is somewhat of an underdog having finished in second place as the candidate for the centre-left party, Movimiento Semilla. 

The first round of the elections saw a voting rate of 60% alongside 17.4% of null votes and 7% of blank votes, votes that both candidates will need to win as they move on to the next round. A map by Prensa Libre highlights that Arévalo won the majority of votes in the urban areas of the municipality of Quetzaltenango and Guatemala. However, his majority in the City of Guatemala was not enough to win the City Hall. On the other hand, Torres capitalised on the rural votes by winning a majority in the municipalities of Huehuetenango, Quiché, Alta Verapaz, Suchitepéquez, and Chiquimula.

Who is the underdog?

Arévalo is a career diplomat and has previously served as Guatemala’s ambassador to Spain and the vice minister of foreign affairs. Since January 2020 he has been a member of the Guatemalan Congress. Arévalo is also the son of the previous Guatemalan president, Juan José Arévalo Bermejo, the first president to be elected by popular vote in a Central American country and the father of modern democracy in Guatemala. Bernardo Arévalo began his life by being born in exile in Uruguay.  The birth of democracy slowly died in 1954 following a golpe de estado where the President Jacobo Árbenz was removed from power in a CIA covert operation code-named PBSuccess.

Arévalo’s win to head to the second round of the elections is symbolic to say the least as dozens of government critics in Guatemala have been forced into exile in recent years, with some critics being barred from running in this year’s elections. The image of Arévalo Junior is strongly connected with democracy as Arévalo Senior was the country’s first democratically elected president, with hopes high for a return to a more democratic system within the country. Currently, 57% of Guatemalans do not trust the democratic process. We will have to wait for the second round of the elections to see if this will change in the future and if Arévalo Junior will become the next President of Guatemala.

What to expect for the second round and for the future?

This election poses a great threat to Guatemala’s conservative and traditional private sector as it highlights the lack of influence that traditional powers had upon the elections. Although many government critics were banned from running, Arévalo’s shock results poses a threat to the authoritarian order within the country and a hope for democracy. Looking at the second round of the elections, it is likely that the traditional private sector will support Torres over Arévalo. 

Although Sandra Torres representing UNE and Bernardo Arévalo representing Movimiento Semilla will compete for the presidency, navigating congress will be a challenge for both of them, regardless of the winner. As we see from the diagram by Prensa Libre, the party with the largest number of seats is the conservative right-wing party, Vamos, who won 40 out of the 160 seats of the National Congress. UNE came second with 27 seats and Movimiento Semilla came third having won 24 seats. 

In the coming weeks:

• Torres and Arévalo will campaign to win the second round of the Guatemalan elections. Considering that many obstacles have been put in place to limit the influence of government critics in the build up to elections, with some candidates having been banned, it will be interesting to see how Arévalo’s campaign will develop and if he will be allowed to campaign in peace.

• It is likely that discussions will take place in Congress in an attempt to form congressional majorities. The failure to build a strong coalition will limit the ability of both presidential candidates to fully implement their mandates. 

*Image from Infobae.