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Bernardo Arévalo was inaugurated in the early hours of this Monday, January 15, as president of Guatemala, after months of judicial investigations against him and against his party, the Semilla Movement. Arévalo's inauguration was delayed more than eight hours due to obstacles in Congress to appoint the board of directors of the Legislature, which was the one that swore him in as president. One of several obstacles since the progressive won the elections in August 2023. Although he managed to take office, the path seems complex. What are the challenges of the new Government? We analyze it in this edition of El Debate.
After months of judicial fights and an investiture that lasted for hours, Bernardo Arévalo was finally sworn in as the new president of Guatemala.
But while Arévalo reaches the Executive, his party, the Semilla Movement, is fighting not to be suspended, which could reduce the room for maneuver that Arévalo has in the Congress of the Republic.
But the struggle is not only between the Executive and the Legislative. From the judicial side, the attorney general and head of the Public Ministry, María Consuelo Porras, has led actions to try to prevent Arévalo from coming to power. For example, her office raided the headquarters of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal on multiple occasions, where part of the votes by which Arévalo won in August 2023 were stored.
Read also“Never again will authoritarianism”: Arévalo sworn in as president of Guatemala after a barrage of obstacles
Furthermore, less than a week before the president's inauguration, the Public Ministry ordered the capture of four electoral magistrates. Also on his orders, they captured the former Government Minister, Napoleón Barrientos, for not complying with an order in October of last year to repress the demonstrators who were protesting against the prosecutor Porras and in support of Arévalo. Even the now Vice President Karin Herrera asked the Constitutional Court to ratify her immunity so that she would not be arrested, since the version spread that the Prosecutor's Office was after her.
With this internal fracture, will the new president of Guatemala be able to rescue the country from the corrupt, as he himself usually promises? What immediate challenges await the Arévalo Government? We talked about it with our guests:
– Andrés Suárez Jaramillo, France 24 correspondent for Central America.
– Carmen Rosa de León-Escribano, researcher and representative of the NGO IEPADES in Europe.
– Édgar Ortiz Romero, lawyer expert in constitutional law and political risk.
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