Photo: JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP via Getty Images
On Sunday, June 25, 2023, 9,372,164 registered voters in Guatemala’s 22 departments will be going to go the polls to elect the country’s next president and vice president, the 160-seat congress, 20 members to the Central American Parliament, 340 mayors, and 3,965 municipal councils, all of whom will serve a four-year term). The 22 departments are run by governors who are appointed by the president. Come election day, there will also be 89,554 registered voters who migrated to the United States—in a documented and undocumented fashion—who will be able to exercise their right to vote for president and vice president in a dozen U.S. cities.
Guatemala is a decentralized country with distinct subnational identities, and makes up a political expression of a territory in which organized crime competes to control the drug market and there is immunity against eventual extradition requests from the U.S. government.
A total of 3,482 polling stations will open from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The Organization of American States and the European Union will deploy international observers and, in parallel, local civil society organizations will also conduct electoral observation. The police and active members of the armed forces cannot vote and must remain in their facilities on election day.
If none of the presidential candidates can capture 50 percent of votes, plus the one extra vote needed in the June 25 election, a run-off election would have to take place on August 20, 2023 (as per Article 184 of the Constitution, Election of the President and Vice-President of the Republic).
As of mid-June, there are 25 presidential binomials nominated by political parties’ national assemblies to run in this election and 22 of the 25 have been approved by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. Of these 22, only 15 have actual political party platforms.
Since the electoral process began, the Electoral Tribunal has disqualified three antiestablishment candidates who were leading in the polls: Thelma Cabrera, indigenous and peasant leader (campesino); Roberto Arzú, the son of conservative former president Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen (1996–2000); and Carlos Pineda, the outsider who mobilized masses using TikTok. The Electoral Tribunal’s decisions have drawn condemnation upon being perceived as procedural manipulation (manipuleo procesal) characterized as arbitrary and politically motivated, thus fueling public distrust in the electoral institution.
Today, the three contenders leading voter preference for the first round are Edmond Mulet, a 72-year-old UN professional; Zury Ríos, the daughter of former de facto president Efraín Ríos Montt; and Sandra Torres, representing the National Unity for Hope party. Below are brief candidate profiles prepared using information from citizen-led platform Guatemala Visible.
Edmond Mulet had an early career in journalism, where he worked for Diario de Centro América and published in major outlets Alerta, Crónica, and el Periódico. After a 10-year tenure in Guatemalan Congress, including serving as president from 1992 to 1993, Mulet transitioned into a diplomatic career where he has remained since. Between 2000 and 2005, he served as ambassador of Guatemala to Luxemburg, the European Union, Belgium, and the United States. Following these appointments, he represented Guatemala in the United Nations until 2017. Some career highlights include serving as head of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, under-secretary general in charge of all peacekeeping operations, deputy secretary general of peace operations, chief of staff of the secretary general overseeing the entire UN system, and head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism on the use of chemical weapons in Syria, where he presented his report demonstrating the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons, including sarin nerve gas, to the Security Council.
He then returned to Guatemala, founded the Humanist Party (Partido Humanista de Guatemala, or PHG) and ran for president in 2019, placing third after Sandra Torres and Alejandro Giammattei. In 2022, he proceeded to found the CABAL political party.
Mulet’s platform is replete with references to modernization. He uses his lengthy career in international affairs to lay claim to a technocratic, pragmatist approach, and is a new option for Guatemala who, given this experience, may be more open to outside suggestions for how to address corruption.
Zury Ríos is the daughter of General Efraín Ríos Montt, former president of Guatemala who seized power during a 1982 coup, whose legacy has cast a long shadow over her own political career. From 1996 to 2012, Ríos served as member of Congress, representing the Guatemalan Republican Front (Frente Republicano Guatemalteco, or FRG), where she promoted legislation on several topics, including education for adult women, adoption, femicides and violence against women, HIV/AIDS, anti-trafficking, and equitable access to family planning. In 2010, she became the FRG’s presidential pre-candidate, though was forced to withdraw in May 2011 citing the inability to finance her campaign.
In 2015, Ríos was again selected as a presidential pre-candidate for the VIVA party, where Ríos Montt’s legacy surfaced yet again as the Electoral Tribunal denied her registration (as per Article 186 of the Guatemalan Constitution, Prohibitions to Opt for the Offices of President or Vice President of the Republic). This resolution was reversed on July 25, 2015, by the Supreme Court of Justice of Guatemala, which ordered her registration. She was ultimately authorized to compete in the presidential elections, where she obtained fifth place. In 2019, she joined Roberto Molina as a vice presidential candidate for the VALOR party, but Molina’s candidacy was rejected by the Electoral Tribunal.
Ríos heads into the first round as the candidate of the comparatively small VALOR-UNIONISTA parties. Her platform emphasizes hardline security reforms, likely influenced both by Guatemala’s entrenched organized crime landscape and her explicit admiration for the sweeping security measures implemented by President Nayib Bukele of neighboring El Salvador.
Sandra Torres is arguably the most well-known among the leading candidates. She co-founded the political party National Unity of Hope (Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza, or UNE) in 2002 alongside her then-husband and future president, Álvaro Colom, who was in office 2008–2012. During her tenure as first lady, Torres held her own shadow cabinet meetings and headed the Social Welfare Ministry, where she promoted conditional cash transfers (Mi Familia Progresa), food support programs (Comedores Solidarios), youth at risk programs (Escuelas Abiertas, Becas Solidarias, Todos Listos Ya), and access to microcredit for women. She attempted to run for president in 2011, but the Electoral Tribunal did not accept her registration alleging noncompliance with Article 186 of the Constitution, which states that “relatives to the fourth degree of consanguinity” and second degree of affinity of the president cannot run for the presidency; after which she proceeded to divorce her husband.
She had a chance to run for the presidency in 2015 and in 2019, both times advancing to the run-off election only to lose to Jimmy Morales and Giammattei, respectively. In Torres’s 2019 campaign, she also faced criminal charges for receiving approximately $600,000 in illegal contributions during her previous campaign. She was later arrested that same year, granted house arrest in 2020, and finally released after paying a $100,000 fine. After Judge Claudette Dominguez ruled that the case “lacks legal merit,” was closed in 2022 while Torres also expressed that the investigation by the Public Ministry “has no legal justification. It does not indicate roles of the alleged criminal structure” (author’s translation).
Torres’ platform for the upcoming contest harkens back to her reputation for supporting social welfare, but also prioritizes hard security, placing improvements to the police and military as its priority. These changes likely reflect her past experiences with run-off election losses, and an attempt to appeal to a broader cross-section of voters.
The 2023 electoral process in Guatemala will be remembered as plagued with irregularities—the electoral rules were applied selectively, and the antiestablishment contenders were taken out of the race based on technicalities. A thorough lessons-learned postmortem process should take place with an eye towards restoring electoral integrity.
These elections are highly relevant. Guatemala is the largest country and economy in the Northern Triangle, there are more than 1.5 million Hispanics of Guatemalan origin living in the United States, and Guatemalan presidents have, thus far, recognized Taiwan, which benefits the United States’ own foreign policy goals. Also, Guatemalans remain one of the largest groups each month arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. The challenges that underpin Guatemalans’ decisions to irregularly migrate to the United States—insecurity, systemic corruption, and lack of access to basic services—drive people to abandon their homes and embark on a dangerous journey north.
Margarita R. Seminario is a non-resident senior associate with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
The author is grateful to Juan O. Cruz, senior adviser (non-resident) and Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, senior associate (non-resident) with the CSIS Americas Program for their insights and review.
