Bernardo Arévalo: “Guatemala did not have conservative governments, but corrupt governments”

“Guatemala has not had conservative governments, but corrupt governments,” the president says in an interview with EFE. Bernardo Arevalothe first progressive leader of the Central American country since the re-establishment of democracy in 1986, who believes that the most urgent thing now is to fight the legacy that his predecessors left him.

“Calling them conservatives is doing them a favor. “We have not had conservative governments, we have had corrupt governments that disguised themselves as ideology”, says the brand new Guatemalan president, who took office twelve days ago after a tumultuous transition of five months which almost led to a coup d’état.

The support of the international community has counterbalanced the persecution of a part of the country’s political, judicial and business elite against Arévalo and his party, the Semilla Movement, which emerged from the 2015 anti-corruption protests that led to resignation of president Otto Pérez Molina, later sentenced to 16 years in prison and currently out on bail.

Bernardo Arévalo de León, sociologist and diplomat born in Uruguay in 1958 during his family’s exile, has been in power for twelve days and one of his first decisions was to recover the emblematic presidential position of his father, Juan José Arévalo (1945-1951 ). ), Guatemala’s first democratically elected president and architect of the “1944 Revolution”, a period of significant social and political change in the country.

Democracy and social justice

“My father was a man with a clear democratic vision and a fight for social justice. “These are two central elements of my government,” says Arévalo. The aim of his predecessors “was not to manage the public, but simply to take advantage of the public coffers,” a theft that he said cost the country 40 quetzales (about $14,763 million).

“The best example we have is the government that has just ended, which left behind truly incredible corruption scandals,” he underlines, referring to the administration Alessandro Giammattei (2020-2024), who currently enjoys immunity as a member of the Central American Parliament.

Last Friday, in fact, Arévalo canceled the government agreement with which his predecessor guaranteed security agents and vehicles to members of his inner circle after relinquishing his position on January 14, because “security must be at the service of citizens” . few.”

Arévalo is obsessed with this problem (he mentions the word “corruption” on average once a minute), but in addition to “fighting for transparency in public management”, the axes of his presidency are “saving democratic institutions” and “resolving the development problems” of a country where, according to the World Bank, 55.2% of the population lives in poverty.

“The most urgent thing is the fight against corruption, but the most important thing is the fight for people’s well-being,” he underlines.

We must “save democratic institutions, not use them as a screen to attack power and generate a situation of impunity for corruption and carry out political persecution, as happened during the last governments”, says Arévalo, in the sights of Attorney General Consuelo Porras since June 25 last year, when, against all odds, he managed to advance to the second round of the presidential elections.

Attorney General Harassment

Porras starred in a harassment operation and the demolition against Arévalo and the ruling Semilla movement, described as a “coup attempt” by various international actors, from the Joe Biden administration to Parliament and the European Commission, including the Organization of American States (OAS ) and most governments. in the area.

Before assuming the presidency, Arévalo assured that he would ask for the resignation of the attorney general. Now he is more cautious in his words, even if he remains firmly determined to ensure that “the Public Prosecutor ceases the process of persecution against the democratic institutions that he has conducted and assumes a functioning in conformity with democratic principles”.

Ensuring political stability and avoiding attempts at democratic reversal are two other important challenges that his Presidency must face face a Parliament in which his party has only 23 seats out of 160.

That’s why the new Guatemalan president, in whose office they met microphones and spy devices– insists on the fact that “governance must involve actors with the desire to defend democratic institutions and who operate starting from civil society”, such as the indigenous movement, peasant communities and the private sector.

Government plans

“The first thing to do – he says – is to put state institutions into operation, so that they provide services in areas where there is absolute marginalization. We have had exclusive development processes that marginalize. “We operated on the basis of racism.”

Arévalo is aware that there is no magic formula to guarantee economic growth and improve the living conditions of Guatemalans in the four years of his mandate, but it is clear that the roadmap includes the concentration of government plans in the historically most abandoned areas of the country, the implementation of mechanisms to strengthen small and medium-sized businesses and attract investments.

“We have made an explicit invitation to foreign investments. The reason why not many investments arrived in Guatemala is precisely because there was no legal certainty with the government and Cortes in the hands of corrupt characters,” she acknowledges.

“The last governments have placed our country as a pariah on the international scene,” complains the president of Guatemala, who was deputy foreign minister (1994-1995) and ambassador to Spain (1995-1996) during the Ramiro government. Carpio.

“Guatemala – he underlines – needs a strong multilateral system, good relations with the international community and joint work with the democracies of the world to create a scenario of respect for the principles of international law, which is the best guarantee for small countries, like ours.”

Source: EFE