Guatemala’s president-elect is in a bind


Guatemala’s electoral tribunal suspended the party of president-elect Bernardo Arévalo on Monday (29 August), the same day it confirmed his victory in the 20 August elections.

Unless successfully appealed, the ruling means members of Arévalo’s Semilla (seed) movement would join Congress as independents, limiting their ability to shape Guatemala’s legislative agenda.

And it’s just this election’s latest irregularity:

A court then suspended that dissolution until after voting day, but with the election in the rear-view, the order has now gone through.

Intrigue’s take: As if Arévalo’s gig wasn’t hard enough already… Without the backing of his party’s lawmakers in Congress, it’s hard to see Arévalo’s anti-corruption agenda making much headway.

And that’s a familiar story for candidates tackling ingrained corruption anywhere: permitted to win the occasional battle, but never the war.

Also worth noting:

  • Arévalo is the son of Guatemala’s first democratically-elected president, who survived dozens of coup attempts during his six-year term. Arévalo is also Guatemala’s former ambassador to Spain.
  • He’ll be inaugurated as Guatemala’s 52nd president on 14 January 2024.
Latest Author Articles
Election Intrigue – What is Kamala Harris’s foreign policy?

Vice President Kamala Harris has been the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for a whopping… checks notes… five days. We weren’t alive in 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson chose not to run again, but from the accounts of those closest to Johnson, it was a more orderly process.

26 July, 2024
Five geopolitical vibes at the Paris Olympics

As 10,500 athletes from 200 countries and regions head to Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics, the organisers really really want the world’s largest sporting event to be free of politics and geopolitics.

23 July, 2024
The six top lines from China’s ‘Third Plenum’

It’s been a summit-packed week. Between America’s GOP program in Milwaukee, the Brits cosying up to Europe at Blenheim Palace, and Japan hosting 18 Pacific Islands in Tokyo, China’s own Third Plenum almost took a backseat. Almost.

19 July, 2024
Mohammed Deif: dead or alive?

You might’ve noticed an Israeli Defence Force (IDF) tweet on Saturday regarding an airstrike on a “compound” in southern Gaza, where it said “two senior Hamas terrorists and additional terrorists hid among civilians”.

16 July, 2024