Guatemalan President-elect Bernardo Arevalo (left) poses next to the president of the Guatemalan Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Irma Palencia, after receiving his presidential election winner certificate at the Supreme Electoral Court in Guatemala City on Sept 5, 2023. (PHOTO / AFP)

The key message of fighting corruption spread largely by social media has helped yield the surprise victory of a long-shot candidate in the nation’s recent presidential election.

Bernardo Arevalo, a 64-year-old sociologist and former diplomat, was in the sixth place among a crowded field in some opinion polls beforehand. In just two months, his left-leaning Seed Movement connected with traditionally marginalized groups like indigenous movements and young people and tapped into popular anger over widespread corruption.

Arevalo’s main promise was to fight corruption.

Bernardo Arevalo's Seed Movement only obtained 23 seats at the Congress, while rival parties Vamos and National Unity of Hope (UNE) obtained 39 and 28 seats, respectively

One driver of Arevalo’s success was echoing his main messages via social media, including X or former Twitter and TikTok, which were widely used in the election, said Diego Morales, a political scientist in Quetzaltenango, a city about 200 kilometers from Guatemala City, the nation’s capital.

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“On election day access to information motivated the cast of voters, mostly young people, who were inclined to vote for the proposal of the Seed Movement, a party that identifies itself as socially democratic in the words of today's president Arevalo,” Morales told the correspondent.

“The electoral process in Guatemala this year was characterized for being atypical,” said Morales, who pointed out that during the first round of elections null or invalid votes accounted for 17.3 percent of all ballots cast, the biggest single percentage of the vote.

“The results of the first round, where the null vote was imposed, is a case that should be analyzed because it also reflects the weariness of the population with the political class that does not meet the needs of the population, a situation that the Seed Movement was able to channel very well in the second round against the (National Unity of Hope party) and its candidate Sandra Torres,” said Morales.

Arevalo’s focus on fighting corruption set him apart among the candidates.

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“I call on all the peoples of Guatemala, civil society, businessmen and workers, the popular movement, the churches and indigenous authorities, legitimate political forces, students and academia, elected authorities, youth and all Guatemalans who reject corruption and authoritarianism to join forces in defense of democracy and unrestricted respect for the will of the people,” Arevalo said on Sept 1.

Despite his electoral win, Arevalo “faces headwinds” in  the upcoming transition of power, according to a report by Amandala, a biweekly newspaper based in Belize.

Arévalo and Karin Herrera received the president and vice-president-elect credentials officially, his rivals have taken to the courts to contest the results. After the election, an order from the seventh criminal judge, Freddy Orellana, at the request of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity, suspected the legal status of the Seed Movement’s status as a political party. Arevalo claimed these efforts were equivalent to a coup d'etat in the works.

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The Guatemalan attorney general, Consuelo Porras, on September 5 also released a statement denying the Public Ministry’s involvement in any plot to undermine the Seed Movement party.

“We had a really very substantive meeting around the concerns that we have about the political persecution that is carried out by the justice institutions against our party and against our candidacy,” Arévalo said in his meeting with Organization of American States Secretary General, Luis Almagro.

During that meeting which was held between the OAS delegation and the Seed Movement, Arévalo pressed the OAS commission to accompany the transition of power until January 2024.

And these efforts raise another issue for Arevalo and his eventual government — its ability to actually govern the country.

“Governability will depend on the support he receives from the legislature and the support he has from the municipal level. His initial legitimacy is high, six out of 10 voters supported him, but his governability is low, without a strong Congress or municipal support,” Ricardo Barreno, a political analyst at Guatemala Visible, a platform for citizen education that tracks elections and transparency in Guatemala, told the correspondent.

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The Seed Movement only obtained 23 seats at the Congress, while rival parties Vamos and National Unity of Hope (UNE) obtained 39 and 28 seats, respectively.

“The immediate way to achieve governability is to negotiate within a framework of transparency and efficiency,” said Barreno. “The president-elect will have to do his utmost in negotiations, and an open-door government will be key.”

“The future government of President Arevalo must take into account that today we are in a multipolar world, where trade and diplomatic relations are moving forward in a very dynamic way,” said Morales.

The writer is a freelance journalist for China Daily.