Guatemala’s Bernardo Arévalo marked his first 100 days as the president of Guatemala on April 23. Arévalo held an anniversary ceremony, along with the members of his cabinet and the Movimiento Semilla party, in a pedestrian thoroughfare in the historic center of Guatemala City.
Jeff Abbott
“We came to government knowing that the challenges were many. One of them, perhaps the most important, is the fight against corruption,” Arévalo said to the crowd. “But [we continue] with the certainty that we are heading towards dry land, away from the swamp of corruption.”
In his speech, he outlined seven areas that his administration has addressed, including security, education, health care, responding to wildfires, and transparency. But as the Guatemalan daily newspaper Prensa Libre notes, many of these successes are dubious at best, with the healthcare sector facing one of the worst crises in decades as public hospitals lack medicines, electricity, and doctors.
He took the opportunity to announce he was lowering the president’s salary by 25 percent, signing the decree in front of onlookers. Prior to this, the Guatemalan president was one of the highest paid heads of state in the hemisphere, earning nearly $20,000 dollars per month prior to the decrease by Arévalo.
But the biggest change that Guatemala has seen is a president who presents himself before the people. One of the Arévalo Administration’s first actions was to remove the barriers that encircled the Presidential Palace and the National Palace put in place by Jimmy Morales and maintained by the administration of Alejandro Giammattei.
The crisis that Arévalo inherited is immense. But for many in Guatemala, he is not moving quickly enough.
“The expectations were very high,” Marielos Chang, a Guatemalan independent political analyst, tells The Progressive. “So being able to meet them is going to be extremely difficult.”
But as Denis Aguilar writes for the Guatemalan investigative website EP Investiga, the new president has not carried out the majority of his promises for the first 100 days. Among those unfulfilled promises has been the administration’s inability to remove the country’s Attorney General, María Consuelo Porras, who was a key actor in undermining the democratic order, resulting in another campaign promise of pursuing the previous administration for acts of corruption moving ahead slowly.
Arévalo’s ascension to the presidency came as a surprise.
He campaigned on a staunch anti-corruption platform, which catapulted him into the run-off election against the right-leaning former first lady and politician Sandra Torres. Arévalo easily won the presidency in the August 20 run-off election.
Arévalo, whose father, Juan José Arévalo, won the presidency in 1945 in the first democratic election following the 1944 Revolution, faced attempts to derail his candidacy by pro-impunity groups following his election. The constitutional court ordered a revision of votes, and the Public Prosecutor’s office sought to close his Movimiento Semilla political party as well as propagated accusations of fraud in the electoral process. These efforts continued until Arévalo’sinauguration on January 14.
The efforts to cast doubt on the historic victory were met by mass demonstrations, which included an encampment outside the Public Prosecutor’s office that lasted for more than 100 days.
But the efforts to cast doubt on the historic victory were met by mass demonstrations, which included an encampment outside the Public Prosecutor’s office that lasted for more than 100 days and was led by Indigenous communities across the country. These efforts were strengthened by support for Guatemala’s fragile democracy from the the United States, European Union, Canada, and Switzerland.
Anti-corruption efforts have been a high priority for the administration. Arévalo, for example, has sought to root out graft networks from state institutions, with hundreds of layoffs of state employees in false positions. According to President Arévalo, over 1,300 positions have been closed.
But the first 100 days have not been free of scandal. Arévalo’s environmental minister, María José Iturbide, was fired on April 7 after reports of the misuse of state vehicles and security for her daughter.
Overall, Arévalo’s administration’s efforts to combat corruption have continued to lack a clear strategy.
Since taking office in January, President Arévalo has opened closer relations with the United States and the European Union. He has traveled to both the United States to meet with Vice President Kamala Harris and to Europe to meet with leaders.
These meetings have largely focused on addressing immigration and bringing further investment into Guatemala to address the root causes of migration. But the impacts of these agreements will be seen in the future.
“As long as the most important arm of the dominant political coalition is in the Public Ministry, the threat to democracy continues.”—Marielos Chang
“I think that the president felt even more comfortable being in that diplomatic role than being the president of the country,” Chang says. But we have to evaluate the fruits of those types of negotiations in real time in the coming years.”
While Arévalo took office in January, the efforts to cast doubt over the 2023 elections have continued.
This has limited the ability of the party in congress to form legislation, though it is important to note that legislation opening economic competition in the country—one of Arévalo’s campaign promises—is currently advancing.
“As long as the most important arm of the dominant political coalition is in the Public Ministry, the threat to democracy continues,” Chang says. “That is what the government has to understand and has to dedicate its efforts to rescuing and recovering the independence of the justice system.”