The Supreme Electoral Court of Guatemala, during a press conference following the day of the second round of elections, named him the actual winner of Cesar Bernardo Arevalo de Leon, a progressive politician representing the Semilla movement, according to the count of 96% of the ballots, he won more than 58% of the vote.
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“You see the trend of counting, at the moment we can confidently name Cesar Bernardo Arevalo de León as the actual winner of this electoral race,” said TSE judge Blanca Odile Alfaro Guerra, the last press conference on the day of the second round of the press conference was broadcast on the court’s Facebook page .
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According to the TSE, Arevalo is gaining 58.68% of the votes after counting 97.6% of the ballots. His rival in the second round, Sandra Torres, who heads the National Unity of Hope (UNE) party, has 36.57%. Thus, regardless of the votes on the uncounted ballots, Arevalo becomes president. The final results of Sunday’s voting will be summed up within a few days, the inauguration of the president will take place on January 14.
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Bernardo Arevalo – son of Juan José Arevalo (president in 1945-1951), 64-year-old diplomat and politician. In this election, he came to victory, positioning himself as a “candidate against corruption”, who promised voters with a request for changes in the country to leave the traditional Guatemalan establishment in the past.
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In the 1980s and 1990s, Arevalo made a career in the local Foreign Ministry, worked in Israel and Spain, and served as Deputy Foreign Minister. The progressive social democratic movement Semilla, of which he is one of the founders, was registered in 2017. For personal reasons, he withdrew from the 2019 presidential election as a representative of Semilla, after which he was elected to Congress.
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After Arévalo’s unexpected runoff runoff, a local court attempted to revoke the legal status of his Semilla (“Seed”) movement, which received about 9% of the vote in parliament and more than 28% at the municipal level. The Constitutional Court upheld the movement, granting it temporary protection in order to complete electoral procedures unhindered, but security forces continued to search the party’s headquarters and the local electoral court.
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This year’s election race was also marked by lawsuits that barred presidential candidates Carlos Pineda (Civil Prosperity), who led the May polls, Mayan leader Telma Cabrera (Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples) and entrepreneur Roberto Arcu (Podemos party).
