Guatemalans to choose between political veteran, surprise outsider in presidential runoff

GUATEMALA CITY — For much of Guatemala’s troubled electoral campaign, authorities seemed determined to limit voters’ options to a range of presidential hopefuls unlikely to shake up a corrupt political system, keeping several candidates seen as threats off the ballot.

In part, the strategy seemed to work. The man leading polls a month before the first round election in June was kept off the ballot, and three-time candidate and former first lady Sandra Torres, an opponent-turned-ally of outgoing President Alejandro Giammattei, was the lead vote-getter in the vote, sending her to Sunday’s presidential runoff.

But one candidate campaigning against the system had flown so far under the radar that no one paid attention to him until he finished second in the June vote. Now Bernardo Arévalo is facing off against Torres on Sunday with polls suggesting he could very well win.

Arévalo’s success appeared to rattle authorities. Almost immediately, a court ordered a review of precinct vote tallies, the Attorney General’s Office announced an investigation of his Seed Movement party, and a judge briefly suspended the party’s legal status.

Torres launched a blistering second stage campaign painting the lawmaker and son of ex-President Juan José Arévalo as a radical leftist threat to Guatemalan families bent on installing a totalitarian communist regime.

For some voters, it made the choice even clearer. In Torres’ attempts to create an Arévalo bogeyman, she elevated his status as an outsider and threat to a system most Guatemalans are desperate to eradicate.

“What we are wagering Sunday is the survival of our democracy,” said political analyst Marielos Chang, explaining that Guatemala could become like other Central American countries simulating functioning democracy through elections while eroding democratic institutions.