Guatemala carries out this Sunday the second round of its electoral process to decide who will be its next president. In this electoral appointment, citizens are called upon to choose between the former first lady Sandra Torres Casanova or the academic Bernardo Arévalo de León.
The Seed Movement candidate was the surprise in the first electoral round, sneaking into second place when the polls placed him in eighth position. Today Arévalo is the favorite to win the ballot if the polls are met, that they give him as the next president of the Central American country with 60 or 65 percent of the total votes.
Torres Casanova, for his part, won the first electoral round on June 20 with almost 900,000 votes, but the polls suggest that he will fall short again in his intentions to reach the presidency.
Guatemalans arrive at the polls in an atmosphere of maximum tension, since the Public Ministry (Prosecutor’s Office) of Guatemala, whose leadership is sanctioned by the United States authorities for corruption, has become the protagonist by force of the elections.
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Since Semilla’s runoff run last June, the Prosecutor’s Office has sought to stop Arévalo’s candidacy for an alleged case of false signatures. However, Semilla’s lawyers have not been allowed access to the file and the accusations are increasingly contradictory, according to various experts.
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The Seed Movement and other sectors have sounded the alarm that there may be attempts to sabotage the election this Sunday through problems at the polling stations, violent polling officers, illegal challenges, or any other type of attack.
Follow live the electoral day in which the president of Guatemala will be elected for the period 2024-2028.
Voting centers open in Guatemala
The Guatemalan voting centers opened their doors this Sunday for election day, in which the Central American country will decide its next president for the period 2024-2028.
At 7 am local time (8 am Colombia time), as scheduled, entry to the almost 3,500 voting centers where 9.3 million Guatemalans are registered to vote was enabled.
Who are the candidates?
Bernardo Arevalo
The sociologist and congressman Bernardo Arévalo is the son of President Juan José Arévalo (1945-1951), who left his mark on the country. On his back lies the legacy of his father, the country’s first democratic president after decades of dictatorships, who ended the 13-year term of caudillo Jorge Ubico, an admirer of Hitler who subjected Mayan indigenous people to forced labor.
He was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1958 due to his father’s exile. Bernardo Arévalo, 64, also lived in Venezuela, Mexico and Chile before arriving in Guatemala at the age of 15.
He studied sociology in Israel, was Vice Chancellor in 1994-1995 and Ambassador to Spain between 1995 and 1996, during the government of the late President Ramiro de León Carpio. He is running for the presidency for the first time. He is a candidate for the Semilla party and promises to follow in his father’s footsteps to lift 60 percent of Guatemala’s 17.6 million people out of poverty.
Sandra Torres
Sandra Torres is the ex-wife of the late Social Democratic President Álvaro Colom (2008-2012), who supported the CICIG, an entity endorsed by the UN that operated as a parallel prosecutor’s office and uncovered notorious cases of corruption between 2007 and 2019.
Torres was born on October 5, 1955 in the northern municipality of Melchor de Mencos. She has a degree in Communication and a textile businesswoman. She was the founder of the National Unity of Hope (UNE), a center-left party that brought Colom to power. and that she now leads with an iron hand.
In 2003, she married Colom, but divorced him in 2011 in order to compete for the presidency and not violate the constitutional rule that prevents close relatives of incumbent leaders from being candidates.
Torres lost the second ballot to Jimmy Morales in 2015 and to the current president Alejandro Giammattei in 2019, who is due to step down on January 14, 2024.
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