US and Brazil warn of attempt to stop Guatemala president-elect taking power

International concern over the future of Guatemala’s democracy is growing, as Brazil’s president warned of a possible coup to stop the president-elect taking power and the US denounced unprecedented attempts to undermine the Central American country’s election result.Pamela Ruiz, a Central America analyst for Crisis Group, said it was hard to predict what the coming weeks had in store for Guatemala.

The centre-left anti-corruption crusader Bernardo Arévalo was elected Guatemala’s new president last month. This week thousands of supporters took to the streets to protest against alleged attempts to block his inauguration in January.Last week, Arévalo – the son of Guatemala’s first democratically elected president, Juan José Arévalo – temporarily pulled out of the transition process after government officials raided electoral facilities where ballot boxes were being stored.  

Addressing the UN general assembly on Tuesday, the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, echoed Arévalo’s warning, citing the crisis in Guatemala after recent “institutional ruptures” in the African nations of Burkina Faso, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Sudan. “In Guatemala, there’s the risk of a coup, which would prevent the winner of democratic elections taking office,” Lula said.

“In a healthy democracy, institutions don’t tamper with ballot boxes after election results have been officially certified by the appropriate authority. Such interference and lawfare … strikes at the very heart of the democratic process and represents an assault on the rule of law.”But she believed it was possible members of Arévalo’s party – or even Arévalo himself – could face criminal charges after the official electoral process ended on 31 October.

Political observers had hailed Arévalo’s surprise election as a powerful correction to the democratic deterioration in Latin America, where countries such as El Salvador, Nicaragua and Venezuela have taken an alarming authoritarian turn in recent years. Concerns have also been raised over the erosion of democratic institutions in Mexico under its president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and the deadly crackdown on anti-government protests in Peru under Dina Boluarte.