Carlos Pineda greets supporters from a truck during a campaign rally in Guatemala City on May 14. Moises Castillo (AP)
At the beginning of May, the newspaper Prensa Libre published a poll of electoral preferences with a result that surprised Guatemala. The poll showed Carlos Pineda, a farmer who is not part of traditional Guatemalan party politics, who has built a profile as a successful businessman through videos on Tik Tok and other social networks. The poll gave him 23% of the preferences and with it a new electoral scenario was opened, with Pineda going to a second round and with ample probabilities of becoming president. His candidacy, however, has been threatened by an injunction imposed by political rivals before the Electoral Tribunal, who allege irregularities during the process of proclaiming Pineda's candidacy. This Friday the justice has suspended, at least temporarily, his candidacy and the aspirant has announced that he will appeal to the Guatemalan Constitutional, the Constitutional Court. "The system is fighting against me and it's because I'm not a suitable candidate for any political sector. Fighting the system is not easy. All politicians share the cake, that has been their business, and that's why they attack me," Pineda said in a video posted on his social networks.
He has called his rapid rise in the polls an "electoral revolution." The truth is that he has positioned himself above traditional candidacies such as Sandra Torres, who lost the last election to the current president, Alejandro Giammattei, and Zury Ríos, the daughter of dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, who at the beginning of the year led the intention of votes, but who has now fallen to fourth place among the candidates for the Presidency. "It's become kind of a thorn in the side for a lot of the other competitors. It breaks in some way with the mold they had planned, because the idea was that the dispute would occur between Zury Ríos and Sandra Torres and now, suddenly, Pineda overtakes them in curve, which already moved the board, "explains Renzo Rosal, political scientist and university professor. "He is a particular phenomenon, he is a right-wing, populist candidate, but he also has an anti-oligarchic discourse, resources that end up being a threat to the established order for these elections and that is why the probability of being left out is quite high," adds Rosal.
Pineda has managed to get into the top of the intention of votes thanks to his ability in the use of social networks, mainly Tik Tok, where he has almost one million followers. In that network, he appears dressed in jeans, boots and hat visiting the towns of Guatemala with a peasant message. Recently, he has expressed his admiration for the government of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and traveled to El Salvador to show his followers the differences between the country ruled with an iron fist by Bukele and the current Guatemala. "I came to El Salvador to know the prosperity of a country when money is not stolen and reaches," he wrote on Twitter with a video showing him landing in Salvadoran territory. "You're famous on Facebook," an airport worker tells him. "I have come to see the progress, the development that has taken place in El Salvador lately," Pineda responds. In the following videos, the candidate shows what he considers to be positive changes carried out by Bukele: he travels to the beaches, visits pharmacies to compare prices of medicines and talks about the fight against corruption, which is, he has said, his main battle. "My respects to President Nayib Bukele, who was able to break the system and that's why El Salvador was able to develop," Pineda said.
On Twitter he calls himself a "passionate businessman" and "pro-life" and in his speeches he always quotes God and asks his followers to pray for his triumph in the elections. Pineda had already flirted in previous elections with a candidacy, but his aspirations did not materialize. He then began to carve out the image of a successful man on social networks, where he also shows solidarity with the most disadvantaged in a country hit by poverty. "In the framework of hurricanes Eta and Iota some businessmen lent their planes and helicopters to transport food and aid to the affected communities and that is where we began to know about Carlos Pineda and his use of social networks. You have to see him as a representative of an emerging sector, groups that are interested in doing business with the State, but also illicit businesses, which has been circling in party politics in the last two decades, but in marginal spaces. Pineda is the representative of this sector," explains academic Rosal.
The analyst refers to the high levels of corruption and impunity that Guatemala suffers and that have worsened since the dismantling of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a kind of special prosecutor's office created in 2006 with UN support. It was under the presidency of former President Jimmy Morales that the mandate of the CICIG, which had also implicated Morales in corruption, was canceled. Morales decided to break with the agreement that Guatemala had maintained for 12 years with the United Nations institution and ordered the departure of foreign officials from the organization, led by Colombian judge Iván Velásquez, considered the whip against corruption in Guatemala. In addition to the departure of that organ from the UNO, a war was unleashed from the judiciary against independent judges and prosecutors who fight against corruption and that has already left some thirty victims, officials who have gone into exile because of the threats against them.
While all of the candidates in the race say they will fight corruption, analysts see it difficult to keep those promises. "Pineda would continue with the control and cooptation of institutions. The purpose is the same, but the actors who will enter into the compromise are others," explains Rosal. "Pineda appears out of nowhere to change the electoral dynamics and comes with many resources of his own, with an impressive positioning in social networks, which is not gestated yesterday, but some time ago. That is why the traditional sectors, the political parties, the classic business sectors, the oligarchy and the electoral competitors themselves see their presence as a huge stone in the shoe," says the analyst.
That rupture that Pineda has caused in Guatemalan politics has made his rivals try to remove him from the electoral contest. Members of the Cambio party filed an amparo before the Electoral Tribunal in which they allege that Pineda did not comply with the requirements established by the electoral law to launch his candidacy for his party, Prosperidad Ciudadana. According to the complaint, this political organization "failed to comply with the requirements that regulate the holding of the National Assembly, such as that it failed to present the economic reports, lists of signatures of the delegates present at the National Assembly, and failed to comply with the representation of minorities." Pineda has defended himself against the attacks and hopes to stay in the race if he wins the appeal. "Despite the efforts of the corrupt, we continue in the fight," he warned.
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