Guatemala’s presidential election is set for a runoff between two candidates promising to boost social spending and improve security in Central America’s largest economy.
Former first lady Sandra Torres leads the race with 15.8% of votes to 11.8% for Cesar Bernardo Arevalo, a former diplomat, after 98% of votes were tallied following a turbulent election that saw poll workers doused with gasoline by an angry mob.
No candidate has anywhere near the 50% needed to win in the first round, meaning Torres and Arevalo will likely head to a runoff in August.
Manuel Conde, the candidate backed by President Alejandro Giammattei, was in third place with 7.8% of votes, with remaining votes split among 19 other candidates.
Polls showed voters are angry about inflation and rising crime. Torres, 67, is in her third bid for the presidency and has pledged to spend more on social programs such as monthly food rations for the poorest families and cash transfers to mothers of schoolchildren. She said she will remove some taxes on basic food items and medicine to help reduce consumer prices. She also favors joint patrols with police officers and soldiers to crack down on street gang and drug trafficking violence.
Arevalo, who was polling eighth last week, said voters saw him as a “credible, decent alternative” to more traditional candidates and promised to weed out corruption. His party, Semilla, was founded in 2017. This is their first run for president.
His government plan calls for no new taxes and seeks to raise the country’s tax take to 13.5% of GDP by 2027. It also envisions an “audit of public debt,” growing the police force and cash transfers to 500,000 impoverished households.
“Macroeconomic stability does not seem threatened, but politics have become less predictable,” BancTrust & Co. analysts Juan Martiin Sola and Ramiro Blazquez wrote in a note Monday. “The headlines of a run-off between two center-left candidates could send Guatemala’s relative spreads higher, in our view,” they wrote.
Voters also elected members of the 160-member single-chamber congress, with initial results showing the ruling party winning the most seats, but no party with a clear majority.
The country of 19 million people has one of Latin America’s lowest public debt burdens and annual fiscal deficits that rarely exceed 2% of gross domestic product. Both candidates will likely remain committed to macroeconomic stability, Santander’s Siobhan Morden wrote in a note Monday.
Electoral Violence
In Guatemala City, two voting centers were attacked with Molotov cocktails. A day earlier, in nearby San Jose del Golfo, buses transporting electoral officials were stopped by armed men who doused some of them in gasoline and threatened to set them on fire, according to a statement by the electoral authority.
The workers were rescued by the police. The electoral authority didn’t elaborate on the motive for the attacks and said the vote in San Jose del Golfo will be repeated. In a separate incident Monday morning, a group of people set fire to a polling station in San Jose, a town on the country’s Pacific coast.
Many voters were angry by the exclusion of three leading contenders, including an anti-establishment businessman who surged to the top of polls in May. The candidates were barred from running for violating electoral rules on the correct filing of paperwork, or by starting campaigning ahead of the official start of the race.
Guatemalan dollar bonds have returned 2.3% year-to-date. The country was upgraded to BB by both S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings this year.
(Updates with polling numbers, comments throughout)
