The Uruguay PEN Center shares with its partners and friends two articles written by Edgard Gutiérrez, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Guatemala during the government of former President Alfonso Portillo (2000-2004).
The first article entitled The fear of the elites awakens the post-electoral crisis in Guatemala, addresses the fear of the Guatemalan elites of losing their influence of power. Politicians, bureaucratic elites and businessmen have created an alliance called by the independent press as the «corrupt pact «, to protect each other and maintain power.
The second article entitled The new opposition in Guatemala tests scenarios of ungovernability for Arévalo, refers to the «surprise» that meant the unexpected second place of the candidate Bernardo Arévalo of the «Seed Movement». With this extraordinary electoral result, Arévalo goes on to compete in a second round scheduled for August 20. The very possible triumph of the Seed Movement means that Bernardo Arévalo «must crack the consensus of the Corrupt Pact .» It is because of that The political operator of President Alejandro Giammattei , the prosecutor of the Guatemalan Public Ministry Rafael Curruchiche , disqualified the «Seed Movement» in the middle of the electoral process, which did not proceed due to its unconstitutionality, according to the judiciary of that country.
The fear of the elites awakens the post-electoral crisis in Guatemala.
The Corrupt Pact has amplified the fraud narrative. They have transformed the question that tortured them into the core of the alleged conspiracy: Why is a significant political force in the second round?
EDGAR GUTIERREZ
02 JUL 2023 (from the newspaper El País of Spain)
One week after the June 25 election results , neither the Pacto de Corruptos, the informal alliance of politicians, bureaucratic elites and businessmen, who protect each other to maintain power, nor those who make up Guatemala’s stale status quo have overcome the shock . His initial reaction was to write a false biography of Bernardo Arévalo —the surprise candidate of the day— and set up a distorted agenda of the Semilla party’s ideology, taking advantage of the fact that they were little known.
They were portrayed as a mix of 20th century expropriating “communists” and 21st century conspiracy “globalists”. These expressions —including impertinent allusions to the 2030 Agenda— were used in the campaign by Zury Ríos (the daughter of the dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, who came in sixth place in the votes). Despite the low resonance among the general public, they were reissued to inject fear. Their own fear.
As of Monday the 26th, everyone rallied behind Sandra Torres , who was hated and despised by the status quo during the two decades of her political career. She allowed herself to be covered, and on Tuesday the 27th she was already heard at a press conference adopting the ultra-conservative discourse that hangs religious identity on the State.
By Wednesday 28th, the strategy had been wrecked. Urban youth from the educated middle classes who voted for Arévalo and the Seed Movement disrupted it on their own social media. With passion and sparks of creativity and irony, they were much more convincing than the experts hired by the opposition.
Thereupon, the Pact lifted the fraud narrative. Regarding a bid between the two leaders for the mayoralty of Guatemala City, almost half of the losing parties shouted “fraud!” in chorus. They did not present the alleged evidence to the public. They turned the question that continued to torture them into the key to the alleged conspiracy: Why is an insignificant political force in the second round?
The demand at that time was to annul the elections. Under the premise that the Pact was the victim of fraud, shame overwhelmed them: «We allowed ourselves be attacked even though we control all the entrances and exits of the electoral system,» they seemed to think. But they quickly found a scapegoat, the Electoral Tribunal: With the table set, the magistrates were unable to react in real time to sabotage the intruders.
According to the law, cases of challenges that are presented during the scrutiny can be reviewed and formalized in the following days. The deadline expired on Friday the 30th and the most relevant challenge was that of the CREO party for the mayoralty of Guatemala. He contested about 900 ballots and the difference in the total count was just over 500 votes.
On the afternoon of Saturday, July 1, the Constitutional Court (CC) resorted to a political-legal resource known as “prevention”, which is invoked in cases of power vacuum. Without legal support, the CC ordered the comparison of the minutes with the official results, and suspended the adjudication of charges . In order to avoid further turmoil, it guaranteed the second presidential round on August 20.
The employers organized in the Committee of Commercial, Industrial and Financial Associations (CACIF) endorsed to the CC. Hours before, the CC expressed full confidence that the crisis would be managed, respecting the electoral deadlines.
If the understanding between big businessmen and magistrates was not concealed, the unusual exit from the scene of President Alejandro Giammattei and the head of his party, Vamos, Miguel Martínez, was also obvious. Their determined efforts to inflate his presidential candidate were diminished by the mayors (including many of his allies) who closed the entrance to the municipalities of the buses with “carreados” (poor people who received the equivalent of 100 euros per vote), fearing they themselves be ousted.
The CC’s governance formula is uncertain, despite having the support of traditional internal power groups. Politics is no longer administered with the centrality of other times. Too many caciques expect to be taken into account and the dissidents of moderate businessmen are emerging, while a young citizenry, not so organized but autonomous and enthusiastic, is determined to play with the rules of democracy.
This was the first week of the post-electoral crisis caused by fear of a scenario that was believed to be unfeasible after the exclusion of three popular anti-system candidates. However, has stubbornly materialized with Arévalo and the Semilla party.
The new opposition in Guatemala is testing scenarios of ungovernability for Arévalo.
Bernardo Arévalo will need to break the consensus of the Corrupt Pact and open a gap between the powerful «20 families» while maintaining the support of the people.
Bernardo Arévalo, the Social Democratic candidate who was the surprise of the first round of elections on June 25, is not yet president. However, his team and supporters are already as if he were, both for the positive and negative aspects.
This week Arévalo was seen walking alone, barely accompanied by a discreet security guard, in an exclusive commercial area in the southeast of Guatemala City. It is not the typical habitat of his electorate, but passersby greeted him with signs of sympathy and a handful of diners from a terrace gave him a loud ovation.
Shortly after, a few meters away, he attended the celebration of the Independence Day of the United States at the diplomatic headquarters, where the various elites are usually invited. Arévalo was received as a rock star, while Sandra Torres, his rival in the run-off on August 20, attempted to hide her loneliness by seeking conversation with any distracted guest.
Meanwhile, the ancestral indigenous authorities, a powerful social nerve made up of more than 20,000 leaders (a third are women who proudly carry the rod of authority by merit) in the remote territories of Guatemala, have mobilized in recent days demanding that the judicial system respect the result of the polls. The slogan «Elections at the polls, not in the courts» has become widespread slogan without party authorship.
Many young indigenous people have taken on the task of promoting the figure of Arévalo and as prosecutors protecting the integrity of the citizen vote, even though they do not belong to his party, the Movimiento Semilla of urban ladino intellectuals, with few territorial ramifications. Young ladinos and indigenous people – supported by their parents and grandparents, nostalgic for the Democratic Spring promoted by the candidate’s father, President Juan José Arévalo (1945-1951) – want to disfigure the Corrupt Pact, an informal alliance of politicians, elites bureaucratic and business that snatches their future. They looked for Semilla and Arévalo, contrary to what happens in conventional campaigns.
Despite an electoral design that significantly favored him, the Pacto de Corruptos suffered an unexpected blow at the polls on June 25. However, it is far from being defeated and removed from the dark bureaucratic networks of the state, which were reinforced like never before by President Alejandro Giammattei. Attacks against Arévalo and Semilla emanate from these networks. The satellite parties of the Pact act as claimants of a supposed transparency and the high courts serve as a sounding board, and by ordering acts that break the rules and their procedures, they marginalize the Electoral Tribunal, preventing it, after two weeks, from making official the 340 mayors and 160 elected deputies, and Torres and Arévalo for the presidential runoff.
Many fear that the legal-bureaucratic labyrinth that only less than half of the parties that on July 1st requested to check tally sheets and recount contested votes promote, pursues the perverse goal of circumventing the will of the citizens at the polls. The parties that alleged fraud backfired this week. Semilla’s candidates had almost a thousand more votes than they were assigned in the few polling stations where there was a recount. Nothing significant to alter the overall results. But the electoral handbrake remains on the thumb of the Pact, since under the singing voice of a powerful politician who has just been released from a United States prison, Unidos, after serving a sentence for drug money laundering, is now demanding other municipal counts.
The national and international calls for respecting the electoral results continue to grow. The Joe Biden Administration went so far as to insinuate that the fraud of the votes would entail sanctions similar to those it has applied to the Daniel Ortega regime in Nicaragua. But the Corrupt Pact will not stop their obstruction tactics. They are the advance of the opposition modality that awaits Arévalo as of January 2024, if he comes to assume: judicial, budgetary and legislative agenda bogging down. It is the essay towards the path of ungovernability.
Hard Times are looming, as Mario Vargas Llosa would say in his recent novel about the Guatemalan period 1944-54, in which the son of former president Arévalo will have to break free from his caste to crack the consensus of the Pact and create a rift between the powerful «20 families» without losing the support of the people who have entrusted him with the most significant of missions: dismantling the backbone of the corrupt system.