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“This party was not prepared to govern,” opens sociologist and political analyst Gustavo Berganza. Over a year ago, back in June 2023, Bernardo Arévalo and his social-democrat Semilla party were just as stunned as anyone when he qualified for the runoff election after trailing, days earlier, in eighth place in the polls. It was the first time they ran candidates for both president and VP; everything that came with this victory was as new to them as they were to the electorate.
What followed was even less expected: The Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) tried for months to, first, stop the runoff election from being held and, when that failed, prevent Arévalo from being sworn-in. “The party had to defend itself,” Berganza notes, “filing appeals and reviewing papers from headquarters so that there would be no searches, to the point that they were unable to prepare the cabinet to govern.”
Attorney General Consuelo Porras is ever on the offensive. Two weeks ago, she asked the Constitutional Court to allow her to prosecute Arévalo and remove four top officials, including the secretaries of the Presidency and Social Communications — despite the obvious fact that any such action would require Congress to revoke their immunity.
In an op-ed for El Faro English, Guatemalan journalist Álvaro Montenegro wrote that the attorney general’s “goals are not legal but political.” He added, “She presents herself as Arévalo's opponent and uses the machinery of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to keep the president in check and sow a national climate of anxiety.”
On Monday, Ligia Hernández, a former Semilla legislator and current Director of the Institute for Victims, was arrested on allegations of unregistered electoral financing, as part of an internationally denounced investigation launched last year, after the first round of voting, into Semilla’s accounting and legal incorporation.
María del Carmen Aceña, researcher at the Center for National Economic Investigations (CIEN), agrees that Porras has to a degree hamstrung the administration: “Due to the [small] size of the party and the persecution by the MP, they were busy [last year] trying to defend themselves instead of creating a plan and teaming up with experienced people who could match their principles.“
The hostile political climate was such that, in January, just four days prior to the officialization of Semilla’s government, Anayté Guardado, the designated Minister of Energy and Mines, declined her appointment.
When Communications Minister Jazmín de la Vega was dismissed on May 17, she and the president sparred for days over who was at fault: Arévalo claimed that De la Vega had failed to comply with his instructions, authorizing payments to construction companies outside control procedures, while the former minister asserted that proposed payments “broke my trust in the governing team.”
Aceña explains that public contracting law is complex, and without operational knowledge, budget execution may be delayed.
Health Minister Óscar Cordón, too, announced his departure on June 12 citing health problems. “He [Cordón] was recommended by the First Lady,” says Berganza. “Cordón used to work at an international institution. Since he was not a member of Semilla, he wasn’t allowed to form an administrative team, so he could not stand the pressure of managing the portfolio, since the Ministry of Health is very conflictive.”
Aceña also points out the governing inexperience of Arévalo —a legislator and former diplomat who in the 90s served as vice minister of foreign relations— in the day-to-day running of the government. “The president was never involved in public administration. He was from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but clearly that is not the same.”
According to political scientist Celia Luna, the Civil Service Law is also affecting performance: “Public administration is often about managing teams that have been working for years. But, trusted positions like directorates and sub-directorates are usually the first to be removed when governments change, which can cause stagnation of the activities that were already being carried out.“
An online government
The Arévalo administration has tried to compensate for the holes in its roster with a savvy —and particularly criticism-sensitive— social media presence. For example, Minister of Governance Francisco Jiménez, in charge of the National Civil Police, has used official accounts to announce deployments in response to complaints about crime, echoing the communications strategy of Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele while marking distance from the hardline policing tactics used under the state of exception in El Salvador.
Their attention to social media has cut both ways. In April, there was swift online outcry after digital outlet Vox Populi revealed that Environment Minister María José Iturbide’s daughter had posted on social media about her personal use of official vehicles and state security.
Arévalo’s first choice was not to remove Iturbide. First, he posted on X that he had talked to the minister and that she promised not to allow that again. But two days later, as the firestorm over the use of public resources continued, he backpedaled and fired her.
Another source of social media criticism of the new administration were Arévalo’s repeated international trips. In his first months in office, he made rounds to the United States and Europe. In June, even as the tropical storm season emerged, he announced plans to personally attend the Summit on Peace in Ukraine and visit the Vatican until he received online backlash. He quickly delegated the trip to his foreign minister.
Luna interprets that “Semilla is a government of social media. When something like this happens on social networks, they cannot let it be, because they themselves set high public expectations of how they are going to operate. Hence, when those expectations are not met, people talk.”
Whereas in January public support for the president was polling around 78 percent, according to CID Gallup —in third place in Latin America after Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and Daniel Noboa of Ecuador— by May he slid to fifth with 54 percent.
The press has complained, too. On July 15, veteran newspaperman Haroldo Sánchez, was removed as Secretary of Social Communications —press secretary— after weeks of tensions with journalists over his unresponsiveness to media inquiries. Arévalo has repeatedly promised a policy of transparency and openness to the press, in a stark break from the criminalization of the Alejandro Giammattei years.
In Sánchez’s place, Arévalo tapped Santiago Palomo, one of his most trusted officials whom he appointed months ago to chair an executive branch anti-corruption commission working with civil society groups. On one hand, the fact that Arévalo pulled an official from another publicly important role seemed to indicate a shallow bench of replacements. Notably, Ronaldo Robles, a respected former journalist, communications secretary for President Álvaro Colom (2008-2012), and member of Semilla, drowned last year.
Berganza ventures another explanation: It was a strategic change to protect Palomo from the attorney general. One month earlier, the MP had required that Congress provide information within 24 hours about Palomo’s right to impeachment. Palomo wrote in his official X account that the MP was acting with “suspicious agility” in cases against him. “They moved him because [as anti-corruption commissioner] he did not have the right to impeachment and now, in his new position, he does,“ Berganza believes.
Exiled former anti-corruption prosecutor Juan Francisco Sandoval recently wrote in a column for El Faro English that, “yes, the other two branches of the Guatemalan state seek the failure of the Bernardo Arévalo administration, but the new president must show greater resolve, commitment, and decisiveness… Citizens’ patience has limits; they will not take excuses for an answer.”
Even so, he acknowledged that the administration has narrow room to maneuver. “The corrupt are chomping at the bit to celebrate their missteps.”
This article first appeared in the August 15 edition of the El Faro English newsletter. Subscribe here.
