MEXICO CITY, Aug 21 Son of ex-President of Guatemala Bernardo Arevalo , representing the Semilla movement, is leading in the second round of the presidential election with 51% of the votes, his lead over rival Sandra Torres continues to grow, according to the TSE's top electoral court.
According to the published information of the TSE, according to the results of counting 51.67% of the votes, Arevalo is gaining 58.1%, his rival Sandra Torres, who heads the National Unity of Hope (UNE) party, has 37.26% (previously — 56 and 38 % respectively).
The turnout in the second round of the presidential election was 41% of the 9.36 million registered voters, according to the latest cut of data.
The current President of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammatei, has been in office since January 2020 and, according to the constitution, is not eligible for re-election. The inauguration of the new president will traditionally take place on January 14, at a solemn meeting of the new congress of the country.
Sunday's elections in Guatemala passed without significant incident — in one of them, TSE member Blanca Alfaro received threats. According to Giammathea, the authorities have «already advanced in their investigation» of the incident. In the middle of the day, one of the trucks with polling materials overturned, and an hour before the polling station closed, unidentified persons threw a Molotov cocktail at the polling station in Mixco. In the last incident, there were no casualties, and two criminals were detained in hot pursuit.
Bernardo Arevalo — son of Juan José Arevalo (president in 1945-1951), 64-year-old diplomat and politician. In the 1980s and 1990s, he 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.
After Arevalo's unexpected runoff runoff, a local court tried to revoke the legal status of his Semilla («Seed») movement, which received about 9% of the vote in parliament and more than 28% of the vote at the municipal level. The Constitutional Court upheld the movement, granting it temporary protection in order to complete electoral procedures unhindered, however, security forces continued to search the party's headquarters and the local electoral court.
This year's election race was also marked by lawsuits that barred presidential candidates Carlos Pineda (Civic Prosperity), who was leading in the May polls, Mayan leader Telma Cabrera (Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples) «) and entrepreneur Roberto Arcu (Podemos party).