Giammattei is essentially offering a market-friendly way forward. But he has left himself ample wiggle-room with his vaguely worded plan: The deadline for reaching both the growth and poverty objectives is 2032. Skepticism over Giammattei’s chances of success have to do with both Guatemala’s political system and the president-elect himself. While formally democratic, Guatemala for decades has been tightly controlled by a minority elite. With a multitude of small parties in Congress—26 in the current chamber—governments have been formed by coalitions held together by pork-barrel style political deals and often outright corruption. Up until a few years ago, it looked as if a United Nations-backed anti-corruption body—the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, known as CICIG—was successfully cleaning up Guatemalan politics all the way to the top, investigating graft in coordination with the public prosecutor’s office. In 2015, their investigations, which sparked a mass protest movement, forced the removal and subsequent imprisonment of both the president and vice president. But despite some initial hopes of a new beginning under Morales, who took office in January 2016, the system closed ranks again. When he and his family came under investigation, Morales promptly turned on CICIG, preventing its head from entering Guatemala and refusing to extend its mandate, which ends next month. Court cases were launched to prevent Thelma Aldana, an effective and popular former prosecutor, from running for the presidency. Faced with an arrest warrant and death threats, Aldana had to leave the country. Sometimes it takes an insider to carry out major reforms, and Giammattei is the ultimate insider. He has been in politics for 20 years and has run for the presidency four times for four different parties. Yet the chances of real changes from within look slim. Most politicians in Guatemala have been accused of misconduct at various points in their careers, including Giammattei’s rival in the race, Torres, who faces accusations of illicit campaign funding. Giammattei himself was accused of involvement in the extrajudicial execution of seven inmates at the Pavon prison in 2006, when he was head of the prison system. He subsequently faced charges and was imprisoned for 10 months but was eventually acquitted due to a lack of evidence. More recently, local investigative website Nomada reported in June that his inner circle includes shadowy figures linked to criminal and other nefarious groups—claims Giammattei has rejected. It’s little surprise, then, that many Guatemalans aren’t holding out hope for his presidency. An opinion poll published days before the second-round vote showed that only five out of 10 voters believed a Giammattei government would be honest, while the proportion dropped to three out of 10 for a Torres government. Many Guatemalans didn’t bother to vote at all; 56 percent of voters stayed home. What Giammattei does with CICIG and the safe third country agreement with the U.S. will signal whether he can actually to tackle all his country’s problems. Morales unilaterally served notice that CICIG’s mandate would not be extended, a decision that both Giammattei and Torres initially supported during the campaign. But with Guatemala’s Constitutional Court set to rule on whether Morales acted properly and within his legal authority, Giammattei has become more cautious, saying he will wait for the court’s decision. Giammattei’s advisers have suggested he may create a national anti-corruption commission, incorporating foreign expertise on a bilateral, rather than multilateral basis through the United Nations. If so, it will be hard to escape the conclusion that he is seeking a pliant commission that doesn’t threaten his or his allies’ interests. The safe third country agreement is a conundrum. Although its full details have yet to be released, the deal would see a spike in refugees from El Salvador and Honduras applying for asylum in Guatemala. Guatemalan migrants themselves are also more restricted from making the trek northward, due to tougher border controls in Mexico implemented under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. There is a danger that forcing so many migrants to remain in Guatemala would drain already scarce resources and ramp up social and political pressures on Giammattei’s incoming government. If Giammattei rejects the safe third country agreement, or if it is ultimately submitted to Congress for ratification and rejected, Guatemala could face Trump’s wrath, in the form of threatened trade reprisals or even a tax on remittances. Guatemala would then be even worse off than it already is. Andrew Thompson is a journalist and political risk analyst who covers Latin America. He was previously a foreign correspondent in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil, and head of the BBC’s Latin American Service. He is also an associate fellow at London-based Canning House.Skepticism over Giammattei’s chances of success have to do with both Guatemala’s political system and the president-elect himself.
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