Alejandro Giammattei will assume the presidency of the country on January 14, 2020 with the challenge of implementing policies aimed at providing greater legal certainty to investments and reactivating the economy.
According to the most recent results of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, Alejandro Giammattei won the second round of elections by a wide margin, concentrating 57.9% of the votes, a proportion higher than the 42.1% captured by Sandra Torres, candidate of the Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (National Unity of Hope). See full results.
On August 11, Guatemalans will go for the second time to the polls, in a climate of uncertainty, tension and roadblocks, because of dissatisfaction with the results of the first round of elections and the recent immigration agreement signed with the United States.
Because of the problems associated with the transmission of the results to the computer system, eleven days after the presidential elections were held in Guatemala, the manual revision of the 105,000 physical records has begun.
According to preliminary data from the presidential elections released by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), it was established that the National Unity of Hope, Sandra Torres, was the option that obtained the highest number of votes with 23.7%. Torres was followed by Alejandro Giammattei of the Vamos party with 13.9% of the vote, Edmond Mulet of the Humanist Party of Guatemala with 11.1% and Thelma Cabrera of the MLP with 10.4%.
After the presidential candidates Sandra Torres and Alejandro Giammattei obtained 26% and 14% of the votes, respectively, they will have to go to a second electoral round on August 11 to define who will be the next president of the country.
Next June 16, Guatemalans will have to elect the new government that will assume in January 2020, which will have the challenge of implementing the policies needed to respond immediately to the most urgent demand of the population: the employment generation.
The country's electoral process has been surrounded by uncertainty, since four of the presidential candidates were decided in the courts.
One month before the presidential elections in Guatemala, the Constitutional Court decided to remove from the election Zury Ríos and Thelma Aldana, two of the candidates with the highest voting intentions among the population.
The country's electoral process has been turbulent, since Zury Ríos and Thelma Aldana, presidential candidates who from the beginning headed the voting intentions for the 2019 General Elections, had multiple difficulties.
For the Guatemalan private sector, the uncertainty that prevails in the country is because the details of the government programs of the political parties that will participate in the General Elections are not known until now.
Last March 18 officially began the political campaign for the General Elections in the country, but the legal inconveniences faced by some candidates for the presidency cause doubts in the future, since there is no clarity of who will participate in the process and the government plans of the candidates are not known in depth.
Insufficient resources to finance public spending and the accumulation of outstanding tax credit repayments are some of the problems that the government will face in Guatemala in 2020.
According to the Central American Institute of Fiscal Studies (Icefi), the new government should make an important effort to improve the effectiveness of the Superintendence of Tax Administration, since the percentage of non-compliance with Value Added Tax (VAT) has been growing since 2012 and the percentage of income tax and other taxes is unknown.
Although some uncertainty is projected next year in Guatemala, because of the presidential and legislative elections scheduled for June, it is estimated that the economy will increase 3.2%.
According to the Center for National Economic Research (Cien), it is expected that in 2019 there will be some uncertainty derived from the changes in the three branches of government.
Jimmy Morales, the candidate for the National Convergence Front, won the presidential runoff beating his opponent Sandra Torres by more than a million votes.
With nearly of 70% of the votes, the next president of Guatemala will be a candidate who represents the hopes of a population that has shown itself to be fed up with traditional politicians and widespread corruption in the state.