Global Courant
Last Sunday’s elections exhibit a generational change in citizenship, but also a refreshing of expectations, a determined civic demand for coherence between speeches and public actions, as well as an exhaustion of the unhealthy clientele model of various periods. Although the ruling party obtained, according to preliminary data, around 40 deputies, the demand on these and all congressmen will be much more intense. The official pact receives a certain blow with the end of several of its current and potential allies.
Although the final report of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal is missing, several parties are expected to disappear for not reaching 5% of the vote or having won a seat. They were more like electoral shells, old or new. Among them stands out FCN-Nación, led by Jimmy Morales, who aspired to a seat in Congress and whose brother Sammy Morales was seeking the presidency. They received a resounding no from the public. The Republican Party, founded by Morales’ former Development Minister Carlos Velásquez Monge, and the National Integration Party, founded by Morales’ former lawyer, are also going to the political cemetery. In addition, Humanist, Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples, Citizen Prosperity and Republican Union.
After a prolonged languor, the Partido de Avanzada Nacional also leaves, which was the oldest up to now, founded by the late former president Álvaro Arzú and of which the presidential candidate of Vamos, Manuel Conde, who came in third place in the competition, was a deputy. presidential. The publicized strategy of courting 200 mayors and allocating more than Q6 billion for client work is now exhibited as dysfunctional.
The arrival in the second round of Bernardo Arévalo, from Movimiento Semilla, constitutes the political surprise of this election. His rise could be due to discontent generated by a chain of events that fueled voter skepticism: exclusion of participants, neglect of the TSE to sanction the propaganda use of public resources, the weak, if not non-existent, audit of the origin of campaign not reported but clearly used, which opened the way to drug financing.
In the second round, it will be measured against Sandra Torres, from the National Unity of Hope, who comes to this instance for the third time and on whom a strong anti-vote weighs. In the two previous processes, she seemed to be the nemesis of certain conservatisms that now, perhaps, will knock on her door, perhaps through her vice-presidential position. In any case, a healthy debate between the two options should prevail and polarization should be avoided.
The invalid vote, which reaches more than 850,000 votes, constitutes a silent protest, although eloquent, that enhances its dimension if it is associated with around 350,000 blank votes. Almost 1 million 200 thousand votes that I am the majority in figures, but whose value is discounted from the total. It is not a negligible flow and could be decisive. No doubt both candidates will try to woo him.
The capital’s mayor’s office would again be in the hands of Ricardo Quiñónez, by a fairly close difference and with a more demanding municipal council, but this will have to be clarified by the TSE at the end of the challenge stage. There was relief in communes such as Villa Nueva and Antigua Guatemala.
