Guatemala City, Guatemala – There were cheers and tears in the upscale hotel in southeast Guatemala City where the Movimiento Semilla, or Seed Movement, held their election viewing party on Sunday, as the reality set in.
The Seed Movement’s presidential candidate Bernardo Arevalo had advanced to the second round of the election, nabbing one of two spots in the August 20 run-off.
It was a surprisingly strong finish for Arevalo, 64, a congressman and son of Guatemala’s first democratically elected president. He earned 12 percent of the vote, putting him just behind frontrunner Sandra Torres at 15 percent.
His dark-horse success has some experts speculating the results were a rebuke to Guatemala’s political establishment — and the rollback of democratic norms that some critics observe in the country.
“The vote for the Seed Movement means a rejection of corruption, a rejection of traditional parties,” Gabriela Carrera, a political science professor at Rafael Landivar University in Guatemala City, told Al Jazeera.
In recent years, Guatemala has come under scrutiny for alleged attacks on its free press and anti-corruption advocates, leading experts to question its democratic stability.
Source from www.aljazeera.com