Prosecutors and rivals increase pressure on Guatemala’s president-elect

Receive free Americas politics & policy updates

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Americas politics & policy news every morning.

Politicians and prosecutors are increasing the pressure on Guatemala’s election winner in a bid to undermine his ability to assume the presidency, prompting the US government to sound the alarm over risks to the country’s democracy.

Bernardo Arévalo, a centre-left anti-corruption outsider, won the presidential election last month on a promise to clean up Guatemalan politics. Since then, his run-off opponent failed to recognise his victory while he has faced death threats and his political party, Movimiento Semilla (Seed Movement), has been suspended among a series of other legal challenges.

“There are acts of illegal political persecution by those who refuse to accept the demand of the Guatemalan people for change and to close the chapter of corruption and impunity in the country,” Arévalo said this week.

After winning 58 per cent of the run-off vote last month, the sociologist son of a former president was crowned the winner by the country’s electoral tribunal. His opponents, the National Unity of Hope (UNE) party led by former first lady Sandra Torres, said it saw “irregularities” in the ballot, although international observers have said they have seen no evidence of vote-rigging. 

The moves are aimed at stopping Arévalo’s party taking office in January, a measure that “would amount to a soft coup d’état, and officials appear to be laying the groundwork,” said Edgar Ortiz, a Guatemalan lawyer and political risk analyst.

The US government has congratulated Arévalo on his victory twice and this week said “anti-democratic” actions by prosecutors and others to intimidate election authorities “undercuts the clear will of the Guatemalan people”.

“The US remains concerned with continued actions by those who seek to undermine Guatemala’s democracy,” said secretary of state Antony Blinken. 

Central America’s most populous country and largest economy, Guatemala’s democracy has weakened since the former government shut down a UN-backed anti-corruption commission in 2019 after 12 years of operation. Prosecutors have since aggressively pursued journalists and former officials. 

Rafael Curruchiche, head of the Special Prosecutor Against Impunity (FECI) unit, is on the US Corrupt and Undemocratic Actors list for obstructing investigations and raising other spurious cases. He pursued a case against Movimiento Semilla over fake signatures in its registration documents and this week a government agency suspended the party temporarily on the orders of a judge.

That meant Congress — controlled by parties who oppose Semilla — on Wednesday refused to recognise the party’s lawmakers. Arévalo’s party has challenged the suspension but if it is withheld it would force the deputies to operate as independents and could stop them serving on the committees covering the budget and other areas.

“Although the Semilla suspensions are serious the ultimate goal is to prevent Semilla’s elected representatives from taking office,” Ortiz said. 

Civil society activists say the highly unequal country — which ended a decades-long civil war in 1996 — is governed by an informal and loosely defined “pact of the corrupt” between political, business and military elites. Organised crime and drug trafficking groups now also interfere in politics, analysts said.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) said it believed Arévalo and Karin Herrera, his vice president-elect, had faced specific threats to hurt and even kill them. The government beefed up his security detail and enforced a security perimeter but the IACHR asked for more measures to protect their lives.

President Alejandro Giammattei has promised an orderly transition and the country’s most influential business lobby, CACIF, also came out strongly in support of the democratic process. But a smaller, more radical rightwing group has kept up intense pressure on Arévalo and his supporters, said Ricardo Barrientos, executive director of the Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies.

“This group, which is increasingly shrinking and isolated, wouldn’t be so relevant if it didn’t have an outsized control over the public prosecutors,” Barrientos said. “Its still unclear what the outcome will be from this institution, which appears captured by a group of radicals.”

Guatemala’s public prosecutors office, which includes the FECI, did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.