Is Guatemala About to See an Upset Win for Democracy?
The Presidential election in Guatemala, which will be decided on Sunday, in a second and final round of voting, initially appeared to be over before it began. Within two months of the start of the race, at least three prominent candidates had already been disqualified by the country’s electoral tribunal. Two were conservatives and the third, Thelma Cabrera, a leftist, was the only Indigenous candidate effectively in the running—in a country where more than forty per cent of the population is Maya. What each of the candidates had in common was that none sat well with the political establishment. The tribunal’s reasoning was technical and dubious—in short, it was typical of the government of Alejandro Giammattei, a conservative surgeon with a sagging approval rating, whose time in office ha...
