THE RISK REPORT BY IAN BREMMER
GUATEMALA AND Ecuador held elections on Aug. 20; two small countries, but revealing some key trends in Latin American politics.
In Guatemala, the progressive anticorruption candidate Bernardo Arévalo won the presidential runoff in a landslide against the conservative former First Lady, Sandra Torres. In Ecuador, the right-wing populist businessman Daniel Noboa edged his way into an October runoff against former President Rafael Correa’s chosen candidate, Luisa González, whom he is favored to defeat.
For starters, both Arévalo and Noboa are outsiders who were polling in the low single digits just weeks before overcoming establishment candidates in their respective first-round elections. This evinces strong voter frustration with the status quo in both countries.
Guatemala accelerated its slide toward authoritarianism when electoral authorities controlled by the ruling pact arbitrarily barred multiple change candidates from participating in the race, in an effort to protect the corrupt establishment’s grip on power. That left voters with familiar faces such as three-time candidate Torres and two-time candidate Zury Ríos, the daughter of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt. But Guatemalans rejected the government’s efforts to shape the field by opting for Arévalo, the one remaining candidate with a strong antigraft message.g Similarly, Ecuador’s Noboa was able to benefit from voters’ desire to break out of a polarized political climate defined by differing stances toward Correa. The former President, a left-wing strongman in the mold of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, has loomed large over the political arena since leaving office in 2017 after 10 years in power. But nearly 46% of Ecuadoreans now believe the country should be run by someone who is neither correista nor anti-correista,c according to a recent survey from local pollster Comunicaliza. The shocking Aug. 9 assassination of anti-correista candidate Fernando Villavicencio led some voters to abandon González and look for a populist alternative. Noboa emerged as a contender because he is a political newcomer—albeit a well-known one as the son of Álvaro Noboa, a five-time presidential candidate and one of Ecuador’s wealthiest men—who avoided attacking his opponents during the campaign.
Both candidates also benefited from the youth vote.
